Charidia pilea Evans, 1953

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Supplementary Materials and Appendix, Insecta Mundi 2023 (26), pp. 1-115 : 23

Charidia pilea Evans, 1953 , and Charidia pocus Evans, 1953 (with Charidia lucaria mayo Evans, 1953 as its subspecies) are species distinct from Charidia lucaria ( Hewitson, 1868)

Genomic sequencing of taxa currently treated as subspecies of Charidia lucaria ( Hewitson, 1868) (type locality in French Guiana) reveals prominent genetic differentiation between some of them ( Fig. 2): e.g., COI barcodes of C. lucaria lucaria differ from Charidia lucaria pilea Evans, 1953 (type locality in Colombia) and Charidia lucaria pocus Evans, 1953 (type locality in Peru) by 2.3% (15 bp) and 2.3% (15 bp), respectively. However, despite an obvious phenotypic difference in males having ventral hindwing largely white, Charidia lucaria mayo Evans, 1953 is not strongly differentiated genetically from C. l. pocus . However, we find an irregularity in the mitochondrial genome: C. l. pocus is not distinguishable from C. l. pilea , probably due to introgression from it, but C. l. mayo might have kept its original mitochondrial DNA differing by 1.2% (8 bp) in the COI barcode. Due to genetic and phenotypic differences, we propose a new status of a species for Charidia pilea Evans, 1953 and Charidia pocus Evans, 1953 , and a new combination Charidia pocus mayo Evans, 1953 (type locality in Peru). Moreover, we found another species-level taxon in this complex that is described next.