identifier	taxonID	type	CVterm	format	language	title	description	additionalInformationURL	UsageTerms	rights	Owner	contributor	creator	bibliographicCitation
03853C44FFD20975EECDF8A9F89EF8A2.text	03853C44FFD20975EECDF8A9F89EF8A2.taxon	http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text	http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/SPMInfoItems#GeneralDescription	text/html	en	Rhyothemis variegata (Linnaeus 1763)	<div><p>Synonymy of Rhyothemis variegata and R. phyllis</p><p>The near identity of sequences of both markers (just 0.5% of positions variable) from all analysed specimens identifiable as R. phyllis and/or R. variegata from the same swarm from Cambodia, with representatives of both presumed species mixed, without correlation with phenotypes (Tables 3, 4), and also from two specimens of R. variegata from the Western Ghats, is an equivocal evidence in favour of one biological species. The COI sequences associated with these two species names from GenBank were nearly identical as well (Fig. 4). So the following synonymy should be established at the species rank level:</p><p>Rhyothemis variegata (Linnaeus, 1763), valid name = Rhyothemis phyllis (Sulzer, 1776), junior subjective synonym (synonymum novum).</p><p>This circumstance may be illustrated by a photo by Stephan Wagenbach taken in Cambodia, which shows a copula of a male unequivocally identifiable as R. phyllis (phenotype A) with a ‘typical’ R. variegata- female (phenotype D) (Fig. 5) (iNaturalist 2025: observation 253133592). Since interspecies copulae occur in Odonata quite often, this is just an illustration and by no means an additional proof.</p><p>A direct proof that the phenotypes associated with the names R. variegata and R. phyllis belong to the same species is provided from another photograph from iNaturalist (2025: observation 130496256) made in by Phuwarin Suchartbunmak in Pa Yup Nai Subdistrict, Wang Chan District, Rayong Province, Thailand (Fig. 6). It shows a bilateral gynandromorph of the species considered. It is imperfect since the abdomen looks like entirely male. Anyway, the left wings exhibit the phenotype A, most frequent in males in that area, while the right wings exhibit the phenotype D, found only in females. (A dark subapical patch at the right fore wing is noteworthy as locally showing the opposite (male) phenotype, further evidencing of imperfection of this gynandromorph.) It is well known that in insects and some other creatures in which some sexual characters are determined by cell own genotypes rather than hormones or morphogens, bilateral gynandromorhs occur when a sexual chromosome is lost during embryonic cell cleavage, so that the resulting cell clone further exhibits features of the opposite sex (Goodenough 1984; Kosterin 2022). This photo proves that the phenotypes A and D, earlier associated with the names R. phyllis and R. variegata, respectively, in fact result from just two different genetic programs within the same species.</p></div>	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03853C44FFD20975EECDF8A9F89EF8A2	Public Domain	No known copyright restrictions apply. See Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for further explanation.		MagnoliaPress via Plazi	Kosterin, Oleg E.;Vshivtseva, Ekaterina I.;Blinov, Alexander G.	Kosterin, Oleg E., Vshivtseva, Ekaterina I., Blinov, Alexander G. (2025): What was known as Rhyothemis variegata (Linnaeus, 1763) and R. phyllis (Sulzer, 1776) (Odonata, Libellulidae) are the same species. Zootaxa 5725 (4): 567-582, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5725.4.7, URL: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5725.4.7
