Abstract
BackgroundThe tribe Arctiini is a species-rich tribe of the subfamily Arctiinae of the family Erebidae. The genus Olepa Watson, 1980 is distributed in the Oriental and Palearctic Regions and the diversity reaches its peak in south Asia.New informationWe herein describe the first record of the genus Olepa from China and re-describe Oleparicini (Fabricius, 1775), together with illustrations of its adult and male genitalia. Furthermore, based on an analysis of 658-bp COI barcoding sequences, together with morphological studies, we consider that Olepaschleini Witt et al., 2005 syn. n. is a new synonym of O.ricini.
Highlights
The genus Olepa was originally established by Watson (1980) as a replacement name for the genus Alope Walker, 1855 [preoccupied by Alope White, 1847 (Crustacea)] with Alope ocellifera Walker, 1855 as the type species. Orhant (1986) carried out a taxonomic review of the Olepa ricini Fabricius, 1775 species group, restored the specific status of O. ocellifera Walker and O. clavatus Swinhoe and described four new species from southern India and Sri Lanka
The Chinese population of Olepa is morphologically similar to O. schleini and O. ricini
The genetic difference between Chinese Olepa sp. and Israeli O. schleini is 0%, the difference between two true Indian O. ricini (GenBank accession numbers KX371816 and KY559102) and Israeli O. schleini varies from 0.3% to 0.9% and the difference between Chinese Olepa sp. and Indian O. ricini varies from 0.3% to 0.9%
Summary
The genus Olepa was originally established by Watson (1980) as a replacement name for the genus Alope Walker, 1855 [preoccupied by Alope White, 1847 (Crustacea)] with Alope ocellifera Walker, 1855 as the type species. Orhant (1986) carried out a taxonomic review of the Olepa ricini Fabricius, 1775 species group, restored the specific status of O. ocellifera Walker and O. clavatus Swinhoe and described four new species from southern India and Sri Lanka. Orhant (1986) carried out a taxonomic review of the Olepa ricini Fabricius, 1775 species group, restored the specific status of O. ocellifera Walker and O. clavatus Swinhoe and described four new species from southern India and Sri Lanka. Subsequent studies revealed three additional species from western Asia, India and Indochina (Witt et al 2005, Dubatolov 2011, Orhant 2012) and, later, Singh and Singh (2013) revised the internal structure of the genus and described four subgenera (Ricinia, Pseudoolepa, Orhanta and Cornutia). Currently the genus Olepa is comprised of four subgenera, 14 species and two subspecies, which are widely distributed from western Asia to Indochina, while without any record from China. The current paper is dedicated to the report of the first record of the genus Olepa from China with synonymising of O. schleini with O. ricini
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