Melitaea zagrosi Tóth & Varga, 2011

Russell, Peter J. C., Lukhtanov, Vladimir A. & Tennent, W. John, 2022, Reassessment of the status of some European and Asian Melitaea taxa described as subspecies of Melitaea phoebe ([Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775), with designations of lectotypes where appropriate (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), Zootaxa 5141 (1), pp. 25-38 : 34

Melitaea zagrosi Tóth & Varga, 2011

[TL: Iran, between Kazeroun and Buschir (Konar Takhteh)], subjective junior synonym of Melitaea enoch Higgins, 1941 (syn. nov.). This taxon was distinguished from M. ornata abbas on the basis of genitalia and wing patterns by Tóth & Varga (2011). van Oorschot & Coutsis (2014: 64) discussed at great length the characters used to distinguish this taxon and considered that they were not sufficiently reliable as diagnostic characters, particularly in view of the fact that the Type Locality of zagrosi was in the midst of the distribution of M. ornata abbas in the Zagrosi Mountains ( Tshikolovets et al. 2014: 320, map).Although Tshikolovets et al. (2014) sank M. zagrosi in synonymy with M. ornata abbas , they acknowledged that there is insufficient material to reach a conclusion regarding the status of the two taxa. The present authors’ only additional comment is that the elevation of the Type Localities of M. ornata abbas (2250 m) and the taxon zagrosi (500 m – Konartakhteh) are very different and environmental differences might account for the differences in wing morphology. Van Oorschot & Coutsis (2014) have already suggested that small differences in genitalia measurements could be accounted for by the coverslips compressing the genitalia on the slide. Recently Tóth et al. (2016), using a combination of morphometric measurements on the genitalia and DNA, elevated the taxon abbas to species level and synonymised the taxon zagrosi with it, in contrast to their previous conclusions, which elevated zagrosi to species level separating it from M. ornata abbas ( Tóth & Varga 2011) , with further research by Tóth et al. (2014) confirming this conclusion. However, their current thinking ( Tóth et al. 2016), appeared to be that M. abbas is a species distinct from M. phoebe , M. ornata and M. telona and that the taxon zagrosi is a subspecies of M. abbas . We place zagrosi as a junior subjective synonym of M. enoch .