Liptena eukrines
Creators: name: Libert, Michel
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Lycaenidae
Liptena
Liptena eukrines

description: The Liptena eukrines species complex
Collins & Larsen (2008: 57) define this complex as the grouping of three species, L. eukrines Druce, 1905, L. lloydi Collins & Larsen, 2008 and L. minziro Collins & Larsen, 2008. It is affected by the above results on the one hand because L. durbania has often been considered as a species close to L. eukrines, on the other hand because the distributions of two of its three species are modified.
Relationship between L. durbania and L. eukrines:
In the description of L. durbania, Bethune-Baker writes that it is close to L. eukrines; similarly it is as a female form of L. eukrines that Dufrane described obsoleta (1953: 49), but this proximity is reduced to the resemblance of their upper sides. Their undersides are quite different, as are the genitalia of the males [those of L. durbania are illustrated by Stempffer et al. (1974, Fig. 48), those of L. eukrines by Collins & Larsen (2008: 56)].
It is also very likely that their barcodes are different as well. Indeed, if that of L. eukrines was not sequenced, a sequence was obtained for a male of L. minziro and it is very different from those obtained for the two subspecies of L. durbania (see above), in both the ML and MP trees.
Although these results are not robust and DNA barcode analysis is not suitable for phylogenetic studies, they are consistent with those of the study of genitalia. This difference also makes it completely impossible to consider that minziro is a subspecies of L. eukrines (Collins & Larsen, 2008: 56).
Distribution of species of the L. eukrines complex:
Regarding the distributions, the previous results show that L. eukrine s was observed neither in the south of Kivu (Kamituga, type-locality of obsoleta), nor in the north-west of Tanzania 1. Its range is therefore limited to southern DRC, no farther north than Kapanga (MRAC) and north-west Zambia, as far west as Ikelenge (Heath et al., 2002: 86); it probably flies in eastern Angola, but it has not been observed there (Mendès et al., 2019).
If the distribution of L. eukrines is somewhat reduced, that of L. minziro is on the other hand more extensive than when it was described, since it was collected in the north-east of the DRC, both by Robert Ducarme (16 specimens, including those that were barcoded and dissected) and the ABRI team (14 specimens).
The distribution of the third species in the complex, L. lloydi, is not really modified, but two localities in Cameroon are added to those given in the description, Mont Fébé near Yaoundé (one male, cited as L eukrines in Libert, 1994: 355) and Yokaduma, in the east (a specimen in the collection of E. Joly, pers. com.); there is also another specimen from Ebogo at the MRAC (coll. Bouyer) and one from Nkolmekoui (about 50 km east of Ebogo) at ABRI.
From these modifications, it appears that the three species of the complex are indeed allopatric 2, and that their distributions differ little from those of the subspecies of L. durbania (and also from those, for example, of taxa close to L. congoensis Schultze, 19233).
description: Published as part of Libert, Michel, 2023, Taxonomic notes on Liptena durbania Bethune-Baker, 1915 (Papilionoidea: Lycaenidae: Poritiinae), pp. 29-34 in Metamorphosis 34 (1) on page 33, DOI: 10.4314/met.v34i1.3, http://zenodo.org/record/14119290