Use of species delimitation approaches to tackle the cryptic diversity of an assemblage of high Andean butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea)

Abstract

Cryptic biological diversity has generated ambiguity in taxonomic and evolutionary studies. Single-locus methods and other approaches for species delimitation are useful for addressing this challenge, enabling the practical processing of large numbers of samples for identification and inventory purposes. This study analyzed one assemblage of high Andean butterflies using DNA barcoding and compared the identifications based on the current morphological taxonomy with three methods of species delimitation (automatic barcode gap discovery, generalized mixed Yule coalescent model, and Poisson tree processes). Sixteen potential cryptic species were recognized using these three methods, representing a net richness increase of 11.3% in the assemblage. A well-studied taxon of the genus <i>Vanessa</i>, which has a wide geographical distribution, appeared with the potential cryptic species that had a higher genetic differentiation at the local level than at the continental level. The analyses were useful for identifying the potential cryptic species in <i>Pedaliodes</i> and <i>Forsterinaria</i> complexes, which also show differentiation along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients. This genetic assessment of an entire assemblage of high Andean butterflies (Papilionoidea), provides baseline information for future research in a region characterized by high rates of endemism and population isolation.

A new genus in the diverse Andean Pedaliodes complex uncovered using target enrichment (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae)

“…;2007) who undertook a revision of Pedaliodes but based on a limited set of morphological data only. Some preliminary molecular datasets were generated to investigate the phylogeny of several sections of the complex, a 5-gene dataset for the genera Steromapedaliodes + Redonda (Pyrcz et al, 2017), a COI dataset for Praepedaliodes (Pyrcz et al, 2018), and a nuclear and COI dataset for Altopedaliodes (Padr on et al, 2021), as well as some COI 'barcode' data used to assist species delimitation (Marín et al, 2017(Marín et al, , 2021Padr on et al, 2021). Finally, a couple of species of Pedaliodes sensu lato have been included in the reconstruction of higher-level phylogenies, such as for the subfamily Satyrinae (Peña et al, 2006(Peña et al, , 2011.…”