Melitaea phoebe subsp. amanica, Rebel, 1917

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 : 32

M. phoebe amanica Rebel, 1917

[TL: Kushdjula, Taurus Mountains; Das Dagh, Amanus Mountains, Hatay, Turkey]; syntypic material consists of a single male and two females in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, each having a red ‘type’ label. Hesselbarth et al. (1995: 2, 1031) and van Oorschot & Coutsis (2014: 63) synonymised this subspecies with M. phoebe punica telona and M. telona , respectively; the present authors certainly consider that this subspecies belongs to either M. ornata or M. telona rather than M. phoebe . Tóth et al. (2014) demonstrated that M. telona was present in Lebanon, to the South of the Nur mountain range and Russell & Pateman (2012) reared an egg batch from a female captured at Tuzlabeli geçidi, Muðla, western Turkey and demonstrated from the L4+ larval head colour that the population there was not M. phoebe but M. ornata . The first author considers that the specimens should probably be associated with M. telona but further DNA analysis is required to confirm to which species they belong. In order that this subspecific name can be in future firmly associated with a species we hereby formally designate the male specimen as lectotype for M. phoebe amanica Rebel, 1917 . From figures 13A, B it can be seen that this specimen has the wing morphological characters typical of both M. ornata and M. telona rather than those of M. phoebe . The labels on the specimen pin ( Fig. 13C ) are as follows: (1) on white paper handwritten in black “Taurus/ Kushdjula/ 22.V.14”; (2) on white paper handwritten in black “ phoebe / amanica / Type [in red] Rbl”; (3) on white card typed in black “Misident:/ Melitaea telona, Russell 2021 ”; (4) on red paper typed in black “ LECTOTYPE / Melitaea phoebe amanica / REBEL, 1917 / designated Russell &/ Gaal-Haszler 2021”.

Figures

FIGURES 13–16. 13, Lectotype of Melitaea phoebe amanica, Rebel, 1917. 14, Lectotype male of Melitaea phoebe dorae Graves, 1925. 15, Paralectotype male of Melitaea phoebe dorae Graves, 1925. 16, Holotype of Melitaea phoebe enoch Higgins, 1941. Fig. 13 © H. Bruckner. Figs 14–16 © J. Tennent.A = upperside, B = underside, C = labels on specimen pin.