Urbanus alva Evans, 1952

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Opler, Paul A. & Grishin, Nick V., 2019, Changes to North American butterfly names, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 8 (2), pp. 1-12 : 5

Urbanus alva Evans, 1952 , new status

Described as a subspecies of Urbanus viterboana (Ehrmann, 1907) by Evans (1952), alva (the holotype, male, from Mexico: Veracruz, Atoyac, examined by NVG) was placed in synonymy with Urbanus belli (Hayward, 1935) (the holotype, female, from Argentina: Salta, photographs examined) by Steinhauser (1981), who was unable to see the belli holotype. Our genomic analysis of U. belli from Argentina indicates that it is not conspecific with belli-like specimens from Mexico or anywhere else in North America due to genetic divergence between them. Evans noted shorter hindwing tails in alva compared to belli , and this character holds true comparing the holotypes of these taxa and additional belli specimens from Argentina we sequenced, including males. For these reasons we resurrect alva from synonymy with belli and treat it as a distinct species Urbanus alva, new status. Consequently, we exclude Urbanus belli (Hayward, 1935) from the North American fauna.