Xylophanes loelia ( Druce, 1878 )

Vaglia, Thierry, Haxaire, Jean, Kitching, Ian J., Meusnier, Isabelle & Rougerie, Rodolphe, 2008, Morphology and DNA barcoding reveal three cryptic species within the Xylophanes neoptolemus and loelia species-groups (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae), Zootaxa 1923, pp. 18-36 : 26

Xylophanes loelia ( Druce, 1878)

( Figs. 6 a, 6 b, 8 a–c)

Xylophanes heinrichi Closs, 1917

Taxonomic Notes: Xylophanes heinrichi ( Fig. 7 a) was described by Closs ( 1917) from a single male collected by E. Christeller on 11.???. 1912 (the month is unclear on the label) from “Amazonas”. This is an imprecise type locality, as it could refer to parts of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and even Peru. Of these, Brazil is perhaps somewhat more likely than the others but this is still not at all certain. However, regardless of where in “Amazonas” the moth was captured, the locality would be within the distribution of what we infer here to be X. loelia . The holotype, preserved in the ZSM, is illustrated in Fig. 7 a. X. heinrichi is currently treated as a junior subjective synonym of Xylophanes loelia . Choerocampa loelia was described by Druce ( 1878) from an unstated number of specimens from Chiriquí, Panama, collected by Arcé. Only a single specimen with appropriate data and labels has been found in the BMNH and thus to stabilize the nomenclature, we hereby designate this specimen as the lectotype. The lectotype and its labels are illustrated in Figs 6 a and 6 b.

Distribution: This species is widely distributed in Central and South America. It is known to us from southern Brazil and Paraguay, north through Peru, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Colombia, and into Central America, through Costa Rica and Nicaragua, to Belize.

Genetic variation: Intraspecific variation for the part of COI we sequenced is very low ( Table 2; Fig. 13 , clade # 2).

Figures

FIGURE 13. Strict consensus of the nine equally most-parsimonious cladograms (length = 133, CI = 0.78, RI = 0.94) resulting from the phylogenetic analysis of the complete dataset of DNA barcode sequences for 38 specimens belonging to the Xylophanes neoptolemus (yellow) and X. loelia (blue) species complexes (X. cyrene, X. aglaor and X. libya are outgroup taxa). Each specimen is identified by its SampleID code (see Table 1), and the two specimens with short sequences are highlighted in boxes. The branch lengths are proportional to the number of changes (indicated on branches, optimized under FAST optimization); Bremer support and rescaled Bremer support values are given above the branches for each node, and bootstrap support values are indicated below. Clades within the X. neoptolemus complex are named after groups 1, 2 and 3 as described in the text.

FIGURES 5 – 7. 5 a and 5 b. Xylophanes lolita n. sp., Holotype, ♂, Brazil, Minas Gerais; 6 a and 6 b. Chaerocampa loelia Druce, 1878, Lectotype, ♂, Panama, Chiriquí; 7 a. Xylophanes heinrichi Closs, 1917, Holotype, ♂ “ Amazonas ”. (5 a, 6 a, 7 a: dorsal view; 5 b, 6 b: ventral view).