Abstract
North American Speyeria butterflies are a group of conservation concern and a challenge to butterfly systematists. Establishing species delimitation and evolutionary relationships among Speyeria has proven difficult due to the polytypic nature of many species, coupled with the similarity of wing patterns of sympatric species. Recent molecular work has found not all Speyeria species to be monophyletic, which could be explained by improper species definitions, incomplete lineage sorting, or ongoing hybridization and introgression. However, these studies involved broad geographic sampling where molecular markers such as the DNA barcode may be especially subject to incomplete lineage sorting. Here we focus on a more local scale, analyzing the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase subunit I (CoI) to test whether this marker recovers four sympatric Speyeria species: adiaste (W. H. Edwards, 1864), callippe (Boisduval, 1852), coronis (Behr, 1864), and zerene (Boisduval, 1852), in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We found that CoI works well to separate all four species. Subspecies were less well-defined, with the S. adiaste subspecies clustering separately, but more mixed for the S. zerene and S. callippe subspecies. Overall, our analyses illustrate the utility of the DNA barcode for separating the Speyeria species and suggest further studies to investigate different geographic scales in order to elucidate genetic diversity patterns in this genus in North America.
Highlights
Speyeria (Scudder, 1872) butterflies (Nymphalidae) are a challenging group to identify and classify
We focused on a more restricted geographic scale to test the validity of morphological species of Speyeria in the California Coast ranges near the San Francisco Bay Area
Posterior probability values are indicated near branches
Summary
Speyeria (Scudder, 1872) butterflies (Nymphalidae) are a challenging group to identify and classify. Field workers seeking to identify them describe the utility of collecting many individuals at a location [1,2] to help separate sympatric species and understand subspecific variation. Enthusiasts may often have to settle for “Speyeria sp” [3], unless they can capture good photographs of both dorsal and ventral surfaces, and compare with local knowledge (i.e., collections) of the fauna. The taxonomic history of Speyeria species reflects this difficulty, with subspecies being moved from one species to another A. Comstock, 1925) and carolae (dos Passos and Grey, 1942)), and in some cases, subspecies are given species status [4,5,6]
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