Tagiades silvia Evans, 1934

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui & Grishin, Nick V., 2022, Taxonomic changes suggested by the genomic analysis of Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera), Insecta Mundi 2022 (921), pp. 1-135 : 25

Tagiades silvia Evans, 1934 , new status and Tagiades elegans Mabille, 1877 , reinstated status

Treated as subspecies of Tagiades gana (Moore, [1866]) (type locality “Bengal” [probably Java]) by Evans (1949), Tagiades gana silvia Evans, 1934 (type locality N. Kanara) and Tagiades elegans Mabille, 1877 (type locality Philippines) show genetic differentiation among them suggestive of species level for these taxa ( Fig. 4 ). For instance, T. elegans and Tagiades gana meetana Moore, 1878 (type locality Meetan) show COI barcode difference of 5.9% (39 bp), or T. elegans and T. g. silvia reveal 3.6% (24 bp). Conversely, the barcodes differ by 0.5% (3 bp) between the nominotypical T. gana specimen from Sumatra (GenBank accession JF851897) and T. g. meetana. Therefore we propose to split the T. gana complex into three species ( T. silvia , T. gana and T. elegans ) and place Tagiades gana fuscata de Jong and Treadaway, 2007 (type locality Philippines: Mindoro) and, after much hesitation and very tentatively, pending further research, also Tagiades semperi Fruhstorfer, 1910 (type locality Camiguin Is.) as subspecies of T. elegans . We leave with T. gana other subspecies that Evans (1949) considered valid.

Figures

Figure 4. Genomic tree of Tagiades. See Fig. 1 legend for notations.