Cryptic diversity in the long‐horn moth Nemophora degeerella (Lepidoptera: Adelidae) revealed by morphology, DNA barcodes and genome‐wide ddRAD‐seq data

Abstract

AbstractThe growth of DNA barcode libraries has now revealed many cases of potentially cryptic diversity in various groups of generally well‐studied European Lepidoptera. In this paper, we revise a complex of cryptic species, which were formerly all classified as one species, Nemophora degeerella (Linnaeus, 1758). We found that this complex consists of three taxa: N. degeerella (Linnaeus, 1758), which is widely distributed across temperate Europe north of the Alps, from Portugal to Finland, Central Russia and Ukraine; N. scopolii sp.n., which inhabits central and southern Europe (Slovakia, southern Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Italy); and N. deceptoriella sp.n. from the Caucasus (Russia and Georgia). These species are separated by subtle but stable external morphological characters (forewing size and pattern, relative size of the labial palpus, scapus and compound eyes) and divergent cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) lineages, with at least one geographical region (Austria to southern Germany and Slovakia) where two of these species (N. degeerella and N. scopolii) co‐occur. The characters of the male genitalia and four nuclear markers (CAD, EF‐1a, MDH and MDH; available for two of the three taxa) did not support the separation of the taxa, but data derived from 1363 and 390 restriction‐site associated DNA sequencing (RAD) loci (altogether consisting of 259 311 and 71 778 bp) of four specimens of each N. degeerella and N. scopolii, which were collected mostly from the contact zone strongly supported their distinctiveness as independent lineages. Our study is one of the still quite few cases where morphological and COI analyses are supplemented with nuclear data, and one of the very first cases where next‐generation sequencing based on double‐digest RAD sequencing (ddRAD‐seq) methods have been applied to address taxonomic questions in insects.This published work has been registered in ZooBank: http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:FBA1953A‐412E‐4395‐BB36‐B650621DD0D0.