Calonotos aterrima subsp. tripunctata

Cock, Matthew J. W. & Laguerre, Michel, 2022, Taxonomic changes in the Neotropical wasp moths, Euchromiina and Ctenuchina (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Arctiinae, Arctiini) relating to the fauna of Trinidad & Tobago, with descriptions of new species, Zootaxa 5222 (2), pp. 101-132 : 103

Calonotos aterrima (Sepp, 1847 in Sepp 1843 –1848) ssp. tripunctata Druce, 1898 new status

Figs. 2–3 . BIN: BOLD:AAK1644.

Sepp (1843 –1848, pl. 97) illustrated the biology and adults when describing C. aterrima from Suriname; the adult has a plain black forewing. There does not seem to be any surviving type material. Cerda (2008) treats this species from French Guiana and illustrates the adult male in dorsal view and male genitalia. Druce (1898) described C. tripunctata Druce, 1898 from Trinidad, based on a male with two white forewing spots (type examined, NHMUK), and this name has since then been applied in relation to the fauna of Trinidad ( Draudt 1915 –1917, Kaye & Lamont 1927, Fleming 1957). In Trinidad material, the male consistently has two forewing spots ( Fig. 2 ), while the female has three ( Fig. 3 ).

However, we further note that the male genitalia of C. tripunctatus from Trinidad appear to be the same as those illustrated for C. aterrima from French Guiana by Cerda (2008). Furthermore, DNA barcodes for C. aterrima from French Guiana and C. tripunctata from Trinidad are very close within BIN BOLD:AAK1644, but separate from several other species with distinct genitalia in the same BIN ( Fig. 1 ). Specimens resembling C. tripunctata have not been seen from French Guiana, nor have specimens resembling C. aterrima been seen from Trinidad. Accordingly, although we consider the two names refer to the same species, the Trinidad population is geographically separated and phenotypically distinct and hence should be treated as a subspecies, C. aterrima tripunctata Druce new status.

Cerda (2008) treats C. tripunctata (as C. tripunctatus ) from French Guiana, but it is not the same as the species recognized here as C. tripunctata from the type locality, Trinidad. Cerda’s C. tripunctatus is an undescribed species which will be treated in a separate contribution.

Strand (1915) provisionally treated a series of one male and two female specimens from Caparo, Trinidad, of what he identified as C. tiburtus (Cramer, 1780, in Cramer 1777 –1782), as a potentially separate form based on the absence of white spots on the palpi and thorax. He wording is very tentative: ‘ Ob die fehlende weifse Punktierung ein aberratives Merkmal ist, kann ich nicht mit Sicherheit feststellen; wenn das nicht der· Fall ist, so w¸rde·es sich hier wahrscheinlich um eine Lokalform handeln, die eventuell den Namen trinidadensis m. bekommen möge ’, i.e. ‘I cannot say for certain whether the missing white spots are significant or an aberrant feature. If they are significant, then this would probably be a local form that might possibly be given the name trinidadensis.’ Strand appears to be assigning a name without coming to a clear conclusion as to whether this is a valid taxon or not. We do not find any ruling on the validity of this approach in the ICZN, but since the name has subsequently been used as a form ( Draudt 1915 –1917) albeit mis-spelt trinitatis , and as a variety ( Strand 1927), both prior to 1961, we accept it as an available name. Fleming (1957) mentioned that Strand (1915) described trinidadensis as a form of C. tiburtus , but offerred no opinion as to its status. In Lepindex ( Beccaloni et al. 2018) (and hence elsewhere on the internet) it is treated as a synonym of C. tiburtus , but this is not based on a published taxonomic act as far as we are aware.

With the help of Martin Wiemers, the type series of one male and two females was found at Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut (SDEI), where all are labelled ‘Caparo, Trinidad / A. Heyne, Berlin-Wilm.’, curated together as C. tiburtus , have Strand’s identification labels as C. tiburtus , but were not labelled as types. Bearing in mind that Strand (1915) mentioned no other Calonotos species from Trinidad, we accept these three specimens as the syntypes of C. tiburtus trinidadensis . The type series are not C. tiburtus , but one male and one female C. helymus craneae Fleming, 1957 (new status below), and one female C. aterrima tripunctata . Rather than make trinidadensis a senior synonym of C. helymus craneae , we designate the female C. aterrima tripunctata as the lectotype, and C. tiburtus trinidadensis is therefore a new subjective synonym of C. aterrima tripunctata .

Figures

FIGURE 1. Neighbour-joining similarity tree for selected Calonotos sequences. The evolutionary history was inferred using the Neighbor-Joining method (Saitou and Nei 1987). The optimal tree with the sum of branch length = 0.25886344 is shown. The percentage of replicate trees in which the associated taxa clustered together in the bootstrap test (1000 replicates) are shown next to the branches (Felsenstein 1985). The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths (next to the branches) in the same units as those of the evolutionary distances used to infer the phylogenetic tree. The evolutionary distances were computed using the Kimura 2-parameter method (Kimura 1980) and are in the units of the number of base substitutions per site. The analysis involved 21 nucleotide sequences. Codon positions included were 1st+2nd+3rd+Noncoding. All ambiguous positions were removed for each sequence pair. There was a total of 676 positions in the final dataset. Evolutionary analyses were conducted in MEGA7 (Kumar et al. 2016). DNA barcodes from our work are available in BOLD dataset DS-CALON.

FIGURE 2. Male Calonotos aterrima tripunctata, Trinidad, Cumaca Road, 4.6 miles, MVL, 21.x.1982 (M.J.W. Cock) [MJWC]

FIGURE 3. Female Calonotos aterrima tripunctata, Trinidad, Curepe, at light, 24.vi.1978 (M.J.W. Cock) [MJWC]