Harjesia Forster, 1964

Nakahara, Shinichi, Willmott, Keith R., Mielke, Olaf H. H., Schwartz, Johanna, Zacca, Thamara, Espeland, Marianne & Lamas, Gerardo, 2018, Seven new taxa from the butterfly subtribe Euptychiina (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) with revisional notes on Harjesia Forster, 1964 and Pseudeuptychia Forster, 1964, Insecta Mundi 639, pp. 1-38 : 7

Harjesia Forster, 1964

Harjesia: Forster 1964: 78 .

Type species. Taygetis blanda Möschler 1877: 325 , pl. 3, fig. 12. ― by original designation.

Forster (1964) erected Harjesia to accommodate two species, Taygetis blanda Möschler, 1877 and Euptychia obscura Butler, 1867 , and designated T. blanda as the type species of the genus, even though T. blanda was considered a subspecies of Taygetis sylvia Bates, 1866 by Weymer (1910). Concerning Harjesia, Forster (1964) stated “Characteristic for this genus is mainly the male genitalia with the narrow tip of the valva”, providing no comparison with other genera. Subsequently, Lamas (2004) followed this classification and also included Euptychia oreba Butler, 1870 (regarding Euptychia gulnare Butler, 1870 and Euptychia civica Weymer, 1911 (nomen nudum) as junior subjective synonyms of this species), Euptychia griseola Weymer, 1911 and Taygetis vrazi Kheil, 1896 as members of Harjesia , in addition to proposing Euptychia eremita Weymer, 1911 and Taygetis indecisa Ribeiro, 1931 as junior subjective synonyms of E. obscura and E. gulnare , respectively. Lamas (2004) also listed four undescribed species of Harjesia , of which two ( H. argentata n. sp. and Orotaygetis surui n. gen. et n. sp.) are described below.

Freitas et al. (2016) recently treated E. griseola as a synonym of E. punctata Weymer, 1911 and moved this taxon out of Harjesia by placing it in its own monotypic genus, Sepona Freitas and Barbosa, 2016 , based on molecular and morphological data. As discussed above, Pseudodebis vrazi n. comb. is removed from Harjesia and considered conspecific with one of the new species of Harjesia listed by Lamas (2004). Three species, namely Harjesia blanda , H. obscura and H. argentata n. sp., do form a monophyletic group with a high support (bs = 99, see Fig. 1 ), and we regard Harjesia as a small monophyletic genus to accommodate these three species. Finally, the remaining species in Harjesia (sensu Lamas 2004) appear not to belong in the clade containing the type for the genus (see statement above), and thus will need to be transferred to another genus (Espeland et al. unpubl. data).

Systematic placement and diagnosis. Harjesia appears to be a member of a clade consisting of Forsterinaria Gray, 1973 , Posttaygetis Forster, 1964 , and Parataygetis Forster, 1964 ( Fig. 1 ), but support in this part of the tree is low. Harjesia is distinguished from Forsterinaria by having a ringed ocellus with white pupil in VFW cell M 1 and often in adjacent cells, whereas these ocelli appear just as white pupils or a white patch in Forsterinaria ; ocelli in VHW cells M 2 and M 3 are ringed, and in Harjesia these are large, whereas in Forsterinaria they are small or appear just as simple white pupils; the brachia are about half the length of the uncus in Harjesia (except for H. obscura , in which the brachia are reduced), whereas the brachia are absent or reduced in Forsterinaria . Harjesia is distinguished from Posttaygetis by the absence of a horizontal creamy band in the VHW discal cell that also extends along M 3, in addition to the absence of a reduced and basally placed ocellus in VHW cell M 2, whereas these characters are present in Posttaygetis . As mentioned above, the brachia are about half the length of the uncus in Harjesia (except for H. obscura ), whereas the brachia are absent or reduced in Posttaygetis . Among other characters, Harjesia is distinguished from Parataygetis by having a narrow, rounded apical process of the valva, whereas the distal side is broad and serrated in Parataygetis .

Figures

Figure 1. Phylogeny of selected taxa of the “Taygetis clade” sensu Peña et al. (2010) based on maximum likelihood with support shown as non-parametric bootstrap. Taxa discussed or described in this paper are highlighted in bold.