Autochton reducta (Mabille and Boullet, 1919) Zhang & Cong & Grishin, 2023

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Thirteen new species of butterflies (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) from Texas, Insecta Mundi 2023 (969), pp. 1-58 : 27

Autochton reducta (Mabille and Boullet, 1919) , new status, is a species distinct from Autochton potrillo (Lucas, 1857)

The genome-level phylogeny of Autochton potrillo (Lucas, 1857) (type locality in Cuba) reveals that sequenced specimens of Cabares potrillo var. reducta Mabille and Boullet, 1919 (type locality in Venezuela), including the holotype (NVG-18086C03), form a distinct and prominent clade ( Fig. 21 green). Fst / Gmin statistics for these two clades are 0.40/0.006, however, their COI barcodes do not differ much, 0.6% (4 bp). Due to genetic differentiation in nuclear genome comparable to that of species-level taxa we propose to treat it as a species Autochton reducta (Mabille and Boullet, 1919) , new status. Phenotypically, as the name suggests, this species is characterized by reduced hyaline spots ( Fig. 23e ),and the forewing discal cell spot that is more saddle-shaped or horseshoe-like in the namesake A. potrillo is frequently straight or reduced to one or two small spots.

Figures

Figure 21. Trees of Autochton potrillo group constructed from protein-coding regions in a) Z chromosome and b) mitochondrial genome: A. caballo sp. n. (red), A. potrillo (blue), and A. reducta (green). Primary type specimens are labeled in magenta. See Fig. 1 legend for other notations.

Figure 23. Three species of Autochton, iNaturalist observations.a–b) A. caballo sp. n. USA: TX, Hidalgo Co., Mission. a) 104493477 11-Nov-2017 © Mark + Holly Salvato. b) 116272640 22-Nov-2010 © John Rosford. c–d) A. potrillo. c) 57177194 Cuba: Guamá, 14-Aug-2020 © Alexis Felipe. d) 40695160 Dominican Republic: Hato Mayor del Rey, 7-Jan-2020 © djhiker. e) A. reducta 11287957 Colombia: Atlántico, Tubará, 3-Jan-2018 © djhiker. Some images are color-corrected and/or rotated. CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.