Chlosyne anastasia (Hemming, 1934)

Zhang, Jing, Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Song, Leina & Grishin, Nick V., 2023, Genomic analysis reveals new species and subspecies of butterflies, The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey 11 (6), pp. 1-63 : 11

Chlosyne anastasia (Hemming, 1934) is a species distinct from Chlosyne definita (E. Aaron, [1885])

Melitaea anastasia Hemming, 1934 , a replacement name for Melitaea beckeri Godman, [1901] ( type locality Mexico: Durango, Durango City), which is a junior primary homonym of Melitaea artemis var. beckeri Herrich-Schäffer, 1851 ( type locality in Spain), currently treated as a subspecies of Chlosyne definita (E. Aaron, 1885) ( type locality in USA: Texas, Nueces Co.) is genetically distant from it with Fst /COI barcode difference of 0.27/3% (20 bp). The COI barcode difference is large because the mitochondrial DNA of M. anastasia is closest (0.3%, 2 bp between the COI barcodes, likely due to introgression) to Chlosyne endeis (Godman & Salvin, 1894) ( type locality in Mexico: Nayarit) ( Fig. 6c), a species more distant from M. anastasia according to the nuclear genome tree ( Fig. 6a). Because of this genetic differentiation, we propose that Chlosyne anastasia (Hemming, 1934) , stat. rest. is a species distinct from Chlosyne definita (E. Aaron, [1885]) . Both C. definita and C. anastasia stat. rest. have been recorded from the state of Durango, where the former is known from the north, and the latter is documented from the south ( Fig. 6). Chlosyne anastasia stat. rest. does not occur in the United States.