Post by Adam Cotton on May 29, 2017 15:41:24 GMT
I just received an e-mail from David Lohman about a new publication which will be of interest to many forum readers:
I’m happy to report that a revisionary checklist of the Old World satyrine genus Elymnias, prepared by three colleagues and myself, has just been published. We used an integrative taxonomic approach with data from wing patterns, male genitalia, and a forthcoming, multi-locus molecular phylogeny to revise the taxonomy of the group. Since the species are found almost entirely in developing countries where access to academic journals is often prohibitively expensive, we chose an online, open-access journal, ZooKeys, so that naturalists, conservationists, and other scientists in the countries where these butterflies live can access the paper free of charge.
Specimen and male genitalia photographs of nearly every species and range maps of every subspecies are provided. You can access the paper and download a pdf here: zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=12579
The molecular phylogeny has revealed extensive phenotypic convergence and divergence in wing patterns, presumably related to Batesian mimicry, which as muddled some previous taxonomic treatments based on wing pattern alone (male and female genitalia are more or less uniform throughout the group). Species and subspecies delimitations have therefore been revised to bring the group’s taxonomy in line with its evolutionary history.
As you may know, a molecular phylogeny of the group has been in the works for a while. The bottleneck has been acquisition of fresh material from several rare species. We have obtained legs from every putative species thanks to many generous collaborators, but the DNA in some of these samples (particularly from rare species for which we have no fresh material) is too degraded for PCR. My lab has therefore generated molecular “probes” via PCR from fresh specimens (Peñalba et al. 2014. Mol. Ecol. Res. 14: 1000), and these probes have been used to “capture” (or “enrich”) the loci we’re using from degraded DNA in these old samples (including several holotypes). These captured loci can then be sequenced on a next-generation sequencer. The enriched DNA samples are currently at Macrogen for Illumina sequencing, and I hope to have the data and finish this manuscript by the end of the summer.
Best wishes,
Dave Lohman
I’m happy to report that a revisionary checklist of the Old World satyrine genus Elymnias, prepared by three colleagues and myself, has just been published. We used an integrative taxonomic approach with data from wing patterns, male genitalia, and a forthcoming, multi-locus molecular phylogeny to revise the taxonomy of the group. Since the species are found almost entirely in developing countries where access to academic journals is often prohibitively expensive, we chose an online, open-access journal, ZooKeys, so that naturalists, conservationists, and other scientists in the countries where these butterflies live can access the paper free of charge.
Specimen and male genitalia photographs of nearly every species and range maps of every subspecies are provided. You can access the paper and download a pdf here: zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=12579
The molecular phylogeny has revealed extensive phenotypic convergence and divergence in wing patterns, presumably related to Batesian mimicry, which as muddled some previous taxonomic treatments based on wing pattern alone (male and female genitalia are more or less uniform throughout the group). Species and subspecies delimitations have therefore been revised to bring the group’s taxonomy in line with its evolutionary history.
As you may know, a molecular phylogeny of the group has been in the works for a while. The bottleneck has been acquisition of fresh material from several rare species. We have obtained legs from every putative species thanks to many generous collaborators, but the DNA in some of these samples (particularly from rare species for which we have no fresh material) is too degraded for PCR. My lab has therefore generated molecular “probes” via PCR from fresh specimens (Peñalba et al. 2014. Mol. Ecol. Res. 14: 1000), and these probes have been used to “capture” (or “enrich”) the loci we’re using from degraded DNA in these old samples (including several holotypes). These captured loci can then be sequenced on a next-generation sequencer. The enriched DNA samples are currently at Macrogen for Illumina sequencing, and I hope to have the data and finish this manuscript by the end of the summer.
Best wishes,
Dave Lohman