Morphological and chemical analysis of male scent organs in the butterfly genus Pyrgus (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae)

Chemical communication in the family Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera) is practically unstudied, even though this group includes approximately 4,000 species and represents a fifth of the world's butterfly fauna. We present the first comparative morphological and chemical analysis of scent organs for nine species in the genus Pyrgus, the most species-rich hesperiid genus in the Palearctic region. Our results show that the morphology of the two main male scent organs - the costal fold and the tibial tufts - does not differ between species. The chemical analyses detected a total of 125 different compounds exclusively present in these organs. We document great interspecific differences and much narrower intraspecific variability in the chemical profiles. The dynamics of chemical versus genetic distances indicate two different phases: a faster (but more variable) initial chemical divergence at lower genetic divergences (probably related to speciation) and a slower but more constant differentiation (drift). As a result most species can be identified based on their chemical profiles, except for a closely related species pair (P. malvae/P. malvoides) for which hybridisation is common in the contact zone. Our results suggest that the Hesperiidae is a group with great potential for the study of chemical communication that deserves further attention. © 2014 Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik.Funding for this research was provided by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (project EME2007-33 to J.L.H.-R., R.B. and R.V.) and by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (project CGL2010-21226/BOS to J.L.H.-R. and R.V. and project CGL2004-04680-c10-08/BOS to M.L.M.).Peer Reviewe

Butterfly-parasitoid-hostplant interactions in Western Palaearctic Hesperiidae: a DNA barcoding reference library

The study of ecological interactions between plants, phytophagous insects and their natural enemies is an essential but challenging component for understanding ecosystem dynamics. Molecular methods such as DNA barcoding can help elucidate these interactions. In this study, we employed DNA barcoding to establish hostplant and parasitoid interactions with hesperiid butterflies, using a complete reference library for Hesperiidae of continental Europe and north-western Africa (53 species, 100% of those recorded) based on 2934 sequences from 38 countries. A total of 233 hostplant and parasitoid interactions are presented, some recovered by DNA barcoding larval remains or parasitoid cocoons. Combining DNA barcode results with other lines of evidence allowed 94% species-level identification for Hesperiidae, but success was lower for parasitoids, in part due to unresolved taxonomy. Potential cases of cryptic diversity, both in Hesperiidae and Microgastrinae, are discussed. We briefly analyse the resulting interaction networks. Future DNA barcoding initiatives in this region should focus attention on north-western Africa and on parasitoids, because in these cases barcode reference libraries and taxonomy are less well developed.Support for this research was provided by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) with a JAE-Intro fellowship for the introduction to research to ETD (reference numbers JAEINT_20_00248 and JAEINT20_EX_0638) and by projects PID2019-107078GB-I00/MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and 2017-SGR-991 (Generalitat de Catalunya) to RV, and PID2020-117739GA-I00/MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 to GT. We thank the Rachadaphiseksomphot Fund, Graduate School, Chulalongkorn University, for the award of a Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship to DLJQ. Further support for this research was provided by the Academy of Finland (Academy Research Fellow, decision no. 328895) to VD. PDNH acknowledges support from Genome Canada through Ontario Genomics. BV has been funded by the CERCA Programme of the Generalitat de Catalunya and by the Grant RYC-22243-2017, whose PI is Josep Sardanyés. SV was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, grant PID2020-117822GB-I00 MINEICO/AEI/ FEDER and the European Union.INTRODUCTION MATERIAL AND METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION CONCLUSION SUPPORTING INFORMATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS DATA AVAILABILITY REFERENCES Supplementary dat

Integrative analyses on Western Palearctic Lasiommata reveal a mosaic of nascent butterfly species

Abstract Satyrinae butterflies occurring in the Mediterranean apparently have reduced gene flow over sea straits, and for several species, recent wide-scale biodiversity surveys indicate the existence of divergent mitochondrial lineages. Here, we apply an integrative approach and examine the phylogeography of the genus Lasiommata in the Western Palearctic. Our research comprised molecular analyses (mitochondrial and nuclear DNA) and geometric morphometrics (wings and genitalia) for two main species groups, and a comparative GMYC analysis, based on COI, of all the tribes within Satyrinae from this region. The GMYC approach revealed a particularly fast coalescence rate in the Parargina subtribe. The Lasiommata group was divided into 12 evolutionary significant units: six clades for the L. maera species group, five for the L. megera species group, and one for L. petropolitana, with divergences of about 1%. The patterns of COI were mirrored by ITS2 in L. maera, but the two markers were generally inconsistent in L. megera. On the contrary, morphological differences were coherent with the results of COI for L. megera, but less clearly so for L. maera. L. paramegaera and L. meadewaldoi were considerably differentiated for all the analyzed markers and likely proceeded faster in the process of speciation because of geographic isolation and reduced effective population size, rendering the rest paraphyletic. Our study illustrates the continuous nature of speciation and the difficulties of delimiting species. In Lasiommata, the recognition of taxa as diverging lineages or distinct, possibly paraphyletic species, mostly depends on the criteria adopted by different species concepts

Recluster: An unbiased clustering procedure for beta-diversity turnover

When dissimilarity matrices of faunistic and phylogenetic beta-diversity turnover indices are projected in dendrograms, a high frequency of ties and zero values produces trees whose topology and bootstrap support are affected by the order of areas in the original presence-absence matrix. We tested the magnitude of this bias and developed R functions to obtain consensus trees after shuffling of matrix row order and applied this algorithm to a multiscale bootstrap procedure. Our functions not only solve the bias of row order but, owing to varying support for different bootstrap scales, reveal fundamental characteristics about the structure of species assemblages. © 2013 The Authors.Financial support was provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación project CGL2010-21226/BOS. MR wish to thank EMBO European Molecular Biology Organization for support (ASTF 0075-2010).Peer Reviewe

Skipper impoverishment on large West Mediterranean islands (Lepidoptera Hesperioidea): deterministic, historical and stochastic factors

Biogeographical analyses are applied to skipper (Hesperioidea) presence/absence data from the Western Mediterranean mainland and the three largest islands (Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily) in order to identify potential conservation issues. The analyses performed on species, both collectively and individually, indicate that regional species richness and occurrence in the Mediterranean zone are largely predicted by latitude and area but that islands have impoverished faunas. Several species, predicted to be present on these islands from logistic regression of their continental distributions, are actually absent. The number of species predicted to be present from logistic regression analyses for each island, closely matched the number of species predicted to occur in regional-focused multiple regression analysis. This suggests that missing species have been identified. When compared with species that occur in Sicily and Corsica, the missing species are shown to differ for ecological traits, mainly those linked to altitudinal tolerance. No ecological distinctions were disclosed for Sardinian skippers suggesting a mainly stochastic colonisation. These results, and those from an analogous study carried out on Papilionoidea, point to Hesperioidea having (i) overall more impoverished faunas on islands and (ii) being subject to stochastic or historical colonisation events more than Papilionoidea. Species not predicted to occur on islands based on their mainland distributions and ecological traits, are foci for conservation attention. However, as many species becoming extinct on the islands may be irreplaceable, all species, in particular the Sardinian ones, deserve to be conserved

Phylogeography and counter-intuitive inferences in island biogeography: evidence from morphometric markers in the mobile butterfly Maniola jurtina (Linnaeus) (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae)

Distribution of mobile organisms on near-continent islands is mainly shaped by factors operating over ecological rather geological time. However, the phylogeography of single species has the potential to expose historical factors at work. In the present study, West Mediterranean populations of the butterfly Maniola jurtina are studied using geometric morphometrics. The distribution of the two well established lineages (Maniola jurtina jurtina in the Atlanto–Mediterranean area and Maniola jurtina janira in the Central–Eastern-Mediterranean area) on 12 islands and the adjoining continents are compared. The south-western lineage unexpectedly occurs on islands close to shores occupied by the eastern lineage. We have modelled the distribution of the lineages using three different hypotheses: (1) a contemporary isolation model, which predicts lineage occupancy of islands is linked to relative distances from neighbouring continental areas; (2) a refugial hypothesis, which predicts one lineage to be the ancestral one for the whole region studied, and then successively replaced over part of it; (3) a changing geography hypothesis, which predicts the two lineages to have evolved in their currently occupied areas, continuously sourcing islands subsequent to the Würm maximum glaciation. Of the three models, the refugial hypothesis is most highly correlated with the observed pattern, suggesting that Mediterranean islands may function as refugia during cold periods, much as the three mainland peninsulas of Iberia, Italy and Greece are known to have done. Thereafter, hybridization on the nearest and smallest islands has occurred, with the entire process supporting the notion of the joint influence of factors in ecological and geological time

Middleton Welling et al. UK butterfly traits

This spreadsheet details the available trait data for UK butterflies from six representative sources. Each trait source is coded on a separate sheet. Detailed trait descriptions and references for each source are provided within the spreadsheet itself on a supplementary sheet