Prolibythea vagabunda

Jong, Rienk De, 2017, Fossil butterflies, calibration points and the molecular clock (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea), Zootaxa 4270 (1), pp. 1-63 : 41

publication ID

https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.583183

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2D00AFF5-4FE2-4EC1-A328-C8670CFB8D6D

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6047074

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03AA87D3-2868-FFFF-F7F0-FF1FFADBB444

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Prolibythea vagabunda
status

 

vagabunda . Prolibythea vagabunda Scudder, 1889

Nymphalidae , Libytheinae (based on similarity rather than on apomorphy).

USA, Colorado , Teller County, Florissant; late Priabonian, late Eocene.

Depository: MCZH (holotype, no. 16353).

Published figures Scudder (1889: Pl. LIII Figs. 4 View FIGURES 3 – 4 –9); Emmel et al. (1992: Fig. 1 View FIGURE 1 /43); Murata (1998: Figs 44, 45); Kawahara (2013: Fig. 63).

The rather poorly preserved specimen shares at least one apomorphic character with Nymphalidae , tricarinate antennae. The very long palps are shared with the Libytheinae , but are also found in some other nymphalids (see above under Barbarothea florissanti ). The relatively broad abdomen suggests a female, also indicated by the foreleg bearing complete tarsal claws. The latter is a plesiomorphic character, but in the Nymphalidae found only in Libytheinae , a feature in agreement with palpal characters. As far as visible the venation shows plesiomorphic characters, with a radial vein formula 1, 2, 3+(4+5), but large segments of the veins cannot be made out. Hindwing costa apically extended as in recent Libythea celtis (Fuessly) . Apomorphic character states unique for the Libytheinae are not visible in the fossil, so its assignment to the Libytheinae , in agreement with Emmel et al. (1992), must be based on similarity only. Scudder emphasized that the fossil is more similar to Old World than to New World Libytheinae . Kawahara (2009, 2013) discussed the fossil at length. On the basis of a phylogenetic analysis of all taxa of Libytheinae , fossil and recent, he placed the fossil in the extant genus Libytheana , together with another fossil from the same fossil bed, Barbarothea florissanti (= Oligodonta florissantensis ) (see comments under these names.). The difference between Libytheana vagabunda and L. florissanti is that in the latter the forewing apex is less strongly falcate. Indeed, the relatively strong falcation in L. vagabunda is not an observation, but Scudder's reconstruction, indicated by a dashed line. The insects were fossilized ca 34 Ma in a lake environment. The area has been suitable for fossilization of butterflies for a long period, a million to several million years ( Smith et al. 2008). Consequently, Libytheana vagabunda and L. florissanti may have fossilized at times separated long enough for differences to evolve, possibly even at species level.

L. vagabunda as well as L. florissanti were used as calibration point for the molecular clock of the Nymphalidae by Wahlberg et al. (2009), the first also employed by Misof et al. (2014) in their paper on insect evolution for calibrating Macrolepidoptera. See also the section on Fossils and calibrating the molecular clock.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Lepidoptera

Family

Edelfalter

Genus

Prolibythea

GBIF Dataset (for parent article) Darwin Core Archive (for parent article) View in SIBiLS Plain XML RDF