Polytremis zina taiwana Murayama, 1981

Chiba, Hideyuki, Tsukiyama, Hiroshi, Liang, Jia-Yuan, Wang, Shou-Ming, Shen, Zong-Yu & Hsu, Yu-Feng, 2020, The types of skippers described by Shu-Iti Murayama (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae), Zootaxa 4801 (2), pp. 280-290 : 282-283

Polytremis zina taiwana Murayama, 1981

New Entomologist 30(2): 65.

Labels : “ Taipei Daitonnsan (= Datunshan, in Chinese character) / 15-7-1979 /S. MURAYAMA,” “ P. zina /taiwana/ HOLOTYPE.”

A male specimen was designated as the holotype by Murayama (1981), and the specimen was retrieved in LBM ( Figs. 16–18 ; Dried Insect Database Reg. no. 1500022029).

The systematic placement of Polytremis zina (Evans, 1932) of Taiwan has a history of confusion in the past. Shirôzu (1952) described a taxon named asahinai that he considered as a subspecies of Polytremis pellucida (Murray, 1875) in Taiwan. Evans (1956) synonymized asahinai with Parnara eltola var. taiwana Matsumura, 1919 , but Shirôzu (1960) pointed out that asahinai could not be the same as P. lubricans taiwana since both taxa occur sympatrically in Taiwan. However, Shirôzu (1960) did mention that it may have been questionable whether asahinai belongs to Polytremis pellucida since only the single female holotype was available to him. Later asahinai was considered a subspecies of P. theca (Evans, 1937) ( Chiba & Hsu 1989, Chiba et al. 1992). This treatment, however, turned out to be inappropriate as the specimen of P. theca they examined, which they considered a possible representative of male asahinai, was from west China, not Taiwan, and no specimen of P. theca has ever found from Taiwan. The only record of P. theca from Taiwan is seen in Lin & Su (2013), but the two specimens shown in this work possess diagnostic features belonging to P. zina . Moreover , after Murayama (1981) described P. zina taiwana , Chiba et al. (1992) considered the name taiwana Murayama, 1981 a junior secondary homonym of taiwana Matsumura as the latter was regarded as a valid subspecies of Polytremis lubricans (Herrich-Schäffer, 1869) . Nevertheless , Hsu et al. (2006) found that taiwana Matsumura is actually a junior subjective synonym of Borbo cinnara (Wallace 1866) , thus taiwana Murayama should be resurrected. Based on long series of both sexes of taiwana Murayama collected from the type locality, it appears that the wing markings of the type specimen of asahinai conformed with the female P. zina , while the features found on the type of taiwana Murayama agree with those of male P. zina . Consequently , asahinai Shirôzu should be regarded as the valid subspecific name of the P. zina populations in Taiwan (stat. rev.), with taiwana Matsumura as its junior subjective synonym ( Hsu et al. 2019) .

The genus Polytremis and allies have been molecularly analyzed extensively ( Tang et al. 2017), and zina (including asahinai) is now assigned to the genus Zinaida Evans, 1937 .

Figures

FIGURES 1–18. 1–3. Ampittia matudai Murayama, 1943, holotype; 4–6. Erynnis montanus neomontanus Murayama & Yoshisaka, 1959, holotype; 7–9. Ochlodes siva yuchingkina Murayama & Shimonoya, 1962, holotype; 10–12. Aeromachus bandaishanus Murayama & Shimonoya, 1968, holotype; 13–15. Pseudocoladenia pinsbukana Shimonoya & Murayama, 1976, holotype; 16–18. Polytremis zina taiwana Murayama, 1981, holotype. Scale bar = 1 cm.