COI Barcodes combined with multilocus data for representative Aporia taxa shed light on speciation in the high altitude Irano-Turanian mountain plateaus (Lepidoptera: Pieridae)

Even though the high plateaus of Qinghai-Tibet and Iran share many faunal elements, the historical biogeography of the species present in this area are not very well understood. We present a complete COI barcode library for Aporia Hübner and a first comprehensive phylogeny for the genus including all known species and majority of subspecies using ten available genes (COI-COII, ND1, ND5, Cytb, EF-1a, Wg, 16S, 28S-D2/D3 and 28S-D8). We then focus on A. leucodice (Eversmann, 1843) and related taxa in order to resolve some long-standing taxonomic issues in this species-group. Based on DNA sequence data as well as morphology, we raise Aporia illumina (Grum-Grshimailo 1890) stat. nov. (= pseudoillumina Tshikolovets 2021 syn. nov.) as a distinct species and designate a lectotype; synonymize Aporia leucodice leucodice Eversmann, 1843 (= A. l. morosevitshae Sheljuzhko, 1908 syn. nov.); and describe a new species, Aporia ahura sp. nov., from the Central Alborz Mountains in northern Iran.

Unique among high passes: Phylogenetic inferences from DNA barcoding of the butterfly fauna of Ladakh Trans-Himalaya, India

The butterfly assemblage of Ladakh Trans-Himalaya demands a thorough analysis of their population genetic structure owing to their typical biogeographic affinity and their adaptability to extreme cold-desert climates. No such effort has been taken till date, and in this backdrop, we created a barcode reference library of 60 specimens representing 23 species. Barcodes were generated from freshly collected leg samples using the Sanger sequencing method, followed by phylogenetic clade analyses and divergence calculation. Our data represents 22% of Ladakh's Rhopaloceran fauna with the novel barcode submission for six species, including one Schedule II species, Paralasa mani . Contrary to the 3% threshold rule, the interspecific divergence between two species pairs of typical mountain genus Hyponephele and Karanasa was found to be 2.3% and 2.2%, respectively. The addition of conspecific global barcodes revealed that most species showed little increase in divergence value, while a two-fold increase was noted in a few species. Bayesian clade clustering outcomes largely aligned with current morphological classifications, forming monophyletic clades of conspecific barcodes, with only minor exceptions observed for the taxonomically complicated genus Polyommatus and misidentified records of Aulocera in the database. We also observed variations within the same phylogenetic clades forming nested lineages, which may be attributed to the taxonomic intricacies present at the subspecies level globally, mostly among Eurasian species. Overall, our effort not only substantiated the effectiveness of DNA Barcoding for the identification and conservation of this climatically vulnerable assemblage but also highlighted the significance of deciphering the unique genetic composition among this geographically isolated population of Ladakh butterflies.