Bungalotis gagarini O. Mielke, 1967

Zhang, Jing, Dolibaina, Diego R., Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina, Mielke, Carlos G. C., Casagrande, Mirna M., Mielke, Olaf H. H. & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Taxonomic notes on Neotropical Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera), Zootaxa 5271 (1), pp. 91-114 : 94

Bungalotis gagarini O. Mielke, 1967 is a new junior subjective synonym of Bungalotis corentinus (Plötz, 1882)

A series of misidentifications that started from Mabille (1903), has led to long-standing confusions in Bungalotis E. Watson, 1893 (type species Papilio midas Cramer, 1775 ). Some of them were resolved by designating the holotype of Telegonus diophorus M̂schler, 1883 (type locality in Suriname) as the neotype of Telegonus corentinus Pl ̂tz, 1882 described from Surinamese specimen(s), rendering the former a junior objective synonym of the latter ( Zhang et al. 2022). Genomic sequencing of the holotype of Bungalotis gagarini O. Mielke, 1967 (type locality in Brazil: Goiás) ( Fig. 1a green, NVG-17879D07) places it in the clade of genetically similar specimens with the neotype / holotype of Bungalotis corentinus / T. diophorus ( Fig. 1a purple, NVG-15031G10). Other specimens in the same clade were identified as B. corentinus / T. diophorus from French Guiana and as B. gagarini from Brazil: Rondônia ( Fig. 1a red). COI barcodes between the two primary type specimens differ by 0.5% (3 bp), a difference of the same magnitude as that between the neotype of B. corentinus and a specimen NVG-17104D08 from French Guiana (0.76%, 5 bp), or between this French Guiana specimen and the holotype of B. gagarini (0.3%, 2 bp). These differences are likely to represent individual variation: the barcodes of the two specimens from Rondônia also differ by 2 base pairs. Genetic and phenotypic similarities between all these specimens suggest that they are conspecific. Even original descriptions of the two taxa are similar: both were compared to Bungalotis midas (Cramer, 1775) (type locality in Suriname) with the following differences: for B. corentinus (translated from German), “upper side [of all wings] almost without markings”, and for B. gagarini (translated from Portuguese), “an almost complete absence of spots on the upper surface of the wings”. Therefore, we propose that Bungalotis gagarini O. Mielke, 1967 , syn. nov. is a new junior subjective synonym of Bungalotis corentinus (Pl̂tz, 1882).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Bungalotis group species. a. a phylogenetic tree constructed from protein-coding regions in nuclear genome cut into genera by a green vertical bar: Bungalotis corentinus (red, its neotype and the holotype of Bungalotis gagarini labeled in purple and green, respectively) and Adina adrastor (blue, its holotype labeled in magenta), including specimens from Brazil: Rio de Janeiro shown in d. ♁ OM11.175, e. ♀ OM10.720, and f. ♀ OM18.153, identified as Salantoia dinka; b. holotype of A. adrastor ♀; c. holotype of S. dinka ♁. Photograph c (by N.V.G.) is © of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum London and is made available under Creative Commons License 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and photographs d–f are by Carlos Mielke.