Palaeophilotes panope (Eversmann, 1851)

Lukhtanov, Vladimir A., Makhov, Ilya A., Gagarina, Anastasia V. & Romanovich, Anna E., 2025, Taxonomy of the West Palaearctic butterfly genus Palaeophilotes Forster, 1938 (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) based on combined analysis of COI barcodes and multilocus nuclear markers, Zootaxa 5584 (4), pp. 570-580 : 576

Palaeophilotes panope : DNA barcodes and the first record for the Kazakh Altai

Until now, P. panope was known from four isolated areas: northwestern Kazakhstan ( Dantchenko & Tuzov 2000, Morgun 2013), southwestern Mongolia ( Yakovlev 2003), eastern ( Zhdanko 2004) and southeastern Kazakhstan ( Lukhtanov and Gagarina, 2022) ( Fig. 3 , points 1-4). On April 26, 2019, it was first discovered by us, Vladimir (son) and Alexander (father) Lukhtanov, in the southern part of the Kazakhstan Altai during a survey of the mountaindesert region between the Takyr and Kaldzhir rivers ( Kazakhstan, East Kazakhstan region, ca 48.18° N, 85.04° E) ( Fig. 3 , point 5)

Earlier, the populations from eastern Kazakhstan and Mongolia were described as separate species, P. marina Zhdanko, 2004 and P. svetlana Yakovlev, 2003 , respectively. A detailed morphological analysis of the populations belonging to P. panope , P. marina and P. svetlana was carried out by Morgun (2013). This author concluded that “all populations are the forms of one species with slightly different phenotypes, which may be due to adaptation (e.g., color, type of soil in inhabited biotopes, altitude above sea level)”. Tshikolovets et al. (2009, 2016) downgraded P. marina and P. svetlana to subspecies of P. panope .

Analysis of DNA barcodes of samples obtained previously ( Lukhtanov & Gagarina 2022) and in this study ( Table 1 ) showed that within P. panope there are three haplotypes ( pan1, pan2 and pan3). The haplotypes pan1 and pan2 differ by four nucleotide substitutions. The haplotypes pan1 and pan3 differ by a single nucleotide substitution. The most diverged haplotypes pan1 and pan2 were found in butterflies from the same population from northwestern Kazakhstan. Both haplotypes have a wide geographical distribution. The haplotype pan1 was found in the holotype of P. marina and in the paratype of P. svetlana as well as in several specimens of P. panope from different localities. We believe that this pattern of haplotype distribution is additional evidence in favor of synonymization of svetlana Yakovlev, 2003 and marina Zhdanko, 2004 with P. panope ( Lukhtanov & Gagarina 2022) .

Figures

FIGURE 3. Distribution map of P. panope. 1, western Kazakhstan part of the range; 2, population in southwestern Mongolia (described as P.svetlana); 3, population in eastern Kazakhstan (described as P.marina); 4, population in southeastern Kazakhstan (see Lukhtanov & Gagarina 2022); 5, population in the southern part of the Kazakhstan Altai (this study).