Cicinnus orthane, Blanchard, 1852

St Laurent, Ryan A. & Becker, Vitor O., 2020, A new species of Cicinnus Blanchard (Lepidoptera, Mimallonidae, Cicinninae) from the mangrove ecoregions of Brazil, Zootaxa 4786 (3), pp. 425-430 : 428-429

Note regarding Cicinnus orthane

St Laurent et al. (2018) provided a detailed discussion of the type species of Cicinnus , C. orthane , which was necessary given the previous uncertainty surrounding its identity and the apparently erroneous type locality given for the species by Blanchard (1852). Based on a meaningful identification of the type, these authors were able to clearly circumscribe Cicinnus in the strictest sense based on morphology. Later, St Laurent et al. (2020a) further delimited Cicinnus using phylogenomics, and transferred the bulk of Cicinnus species to Gonogramma Boisduval, 1872 . Consequently, Cicinnus now contains far fewer taxa than it did historically. In their discussions of C. orthane, St Laurent et al. (2018) determined that Brazilian populations of a Cicinnus that were morphologically similar to the lectotype of C. orthane could in fact be the source of the specimen originally used to describe C. orthane and therefore define Cicinnus . These authors found minor morphological differences between the female genitalia of the lectotype of C. orthane and a female from Santa Catarina, Brazil, from the Mata Atlântica biome. Thus, it is not clear whether C. orthane (with an erroneous type locality from Chile) and the populations from southeastern Brazil are conspecific, though they are certainly closely related. In fact, morphologically nearly indistinguishable specimens are known from Mata Atlântica, Cerrado, and the Amazon rainforest ( St Laurent et al. 2018, 2020b, unpublished), so C. orthane likely refers to a complex of species.

Given the above situation, during the preparation of the present manuscript, we were able to examine additional specimens of C. cf. orthane from the central Brazilian Cerrado, which we believe may be a more likely collecting locality of the type specimen used by Blanchard. The specimen used by Blanchard may have been collected by Alcide d’Orbigny during his expeditions across South America in the 1800s, and we posit that one of d’Orbigny’s many collecting localities in Bolivia or central Brazil may have been the true source of the specimen examined by Blanchard, rather than the highly unlikely provenance of Chile ( Blanchard & Brulle 1837; Hornblower 1977; St Laurent et al. 2018). Although St Laurent et al. (2018) reported some records of C. cf. orthane from the Cerrado, that material came from the southern periphery of the biome, in the state of São Paulo and in southern Minas Gerais. Here we report two additional localities from farther north in the central Cerrado, one male from Unaí, Minas Gerais at 700 m (in VOB) and two males from Formosa, Goiás at 800 m (in VOB). One specimen from the latter locality is shown in Fig. 4 . Although the moths from these locations are slightly smaller than those from Mata Atlântica, the genitalia (VOB genitalia 2054, Fig. 6 ) are similar to those from Mata Atlântica (see fig. 6 in St Laurent et al. 2018), apart from some differences that may be the result of the compression of the genitalia from slide mounting in the Cerrado specimen. Unfortunately, no females from the central Cerrado are available to compare their genitalia with those of the lectotype of C. orthane . This would be necessary in order to determine if differences between the “Chilean” lectotype and the Mata Atlântica female ( St Laurent et al. 2018, fig. 9) are also present when comparing the two Brazilian biome populations. Discovery and examination of females would be helpful to determine if there is a distinction between Cerrado and Mata Atlântica C. orthane and whether or not one biome represents the original source of C. orthane sensu stricto.

Figures

FIGURES 1–4. Cicinnus adult male specimens, a = dorsal, b = ventral. 1. C. litoralis holotype, Brazil, Pará, Salinópolis, 5 m (VOB). 2. C. litoralis paratype, data as for Fig. 1 (VOB). 3. C. litoralis paratype, data as for Fig 1. (VOB). 4. C. orthane, Brazil, Goiás, Formosa, 800 m (VOB). Scale bar = 1 cm.

FIGURES 5, 6. Cicinnus male genitalia, slide mounted, a = ventral with phallus excised, b = phallus. 5. C. litoralis holotype, Brazil, Pará, Salinópolis, 5 m, VOB genitalia preparation 2019 (VOB). 6. C. orthane Brazil, Goiás, Formosa, 800 m, VOB genitalia preparation 2054 (VOB).Arrow indicates fingerlike projection of juxtal structure present in C. orthane and some other Cicinnus, but not C. litoralis. Note that vinculum extension is folded upward in its natural position in Fig. 5a, but pulled downward in Fig. 6a. Scale bar approximately 1 mm.