Pieris daplidice race nitida Verity, 1908

Balletto, Emilio, Barbero, Francesca, Bonelli, Simona, Casacci, Luca P. & Dapporto, Leonardo, 2020, Stabilisation of some names of European butterflies (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) in their prevailing usage, Zootaxa 4780 (2), pp. 387-395 : 388

Pieris daplidice race nitida Verity, 1908

(Rhop. Pal., p. 132; also cited as a “forme” both on this same page and on Pl. XXX, Fig. 9) LT: Asia Minor: Fanaraki, and [ Spain]: Andalusia: Malaga (TD: MZUF, Syntypes 2 ♂♂, 2 ♀♀: Kudrna 1983) .

This taxon was listed as a synonym of either Pontia edusa (e.g. Hesselbarth et al. 1995, 1: 426) or of P. daplidice ( García-Barros et al. 2013, p. 960) , respectively for the fauna of Turkey and for that of Spain. Kudrna (1983: 58), Wagener (1988: 35) and Hesselbarth et al. (1995: 426) regarded “nitida” Verity, 1908 as an unavailable infrasubspecific name. However, Art. 45.6.4 states that [the rank denoted by a species-group name following a binomen] “is subspecific if first published before 1961 and its author expressly used one of the terms “variety” or “form” …, unless its author also expressly gave it infrasubspecific rank, or the content of the work unambiguously reveals that the name was proposed for an infrasubspecific entity …”. Verity wrote: “[dans les régions] qui semblent être surtout les plus arides (telles que l’Espagne, l’Algérie et l’Asie Mineure) [ Pieris daplidice ] semble avoir une tendance à être plus petit, à avoir les ailes plus larges, le limbe externe plus convexe, les dessins d’un noir plus profond et à contours plus arrêtés …”. The name Pieris daplidice race nitida Verity, 1908 is therefore available.

The originally designated syntypes probably belong to two separate species, but no lectotype was validly designated by any of the preceding authors under Art. 74. Both Pontia daplidice and P. edusa may possibly co-occur in parts of Turkey (see Geiger et al. 1988, Hesselbarth et al. 1995 and John et al. 2013), while only P. daplidice is known to occur in Spain.

We therefore designate the ♂ Syntype in MZUF from: [ Spanien]: Andalusien: Malaga, C. Ribbe [legit], as Lec- totype of Pieris daplidice race nitida Verity, 1908 (see Fig. 1A ). Consequently, the latter name becomes fixed as a junior subjective synonym of Papilio daplidice Linnaeus, 1758 .

Figures

FIGURE 1. (A). Lectotype (♂) of Pieris daplidice race nitida Verity, 1908: (d) dorsal (v) ventral (MZUF). (B). Neotype (♀) of [Papilio] ausonia Hübner, [1804]: (d) dorsal (v) ventral) (MZUF). (C). Centre: Original Freyer’s sealed box containing the Neotype (♂) of Pontia simplonia Freyer, 1829 (bottom right), together with a female of the same species (top left); Left: electronically extracted enlargement of the Neotype (♂) (d) dorsal (JME). (D). Lectotype (♂) of Euchloe crameri Butler, 1869 as designated by Rothschild (1914) (NHMUK). (E). Lectotype (♂) of Euchloe ausonia var. esperi Kirby, 1871 (5) (NMI). Labels relative to the illustrated specimens are shown on the right of each row.