Biodiversity Data Journal : Taxonomic Paper
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Taxonomic Paper
First record of the genus Olepa Watson, 1980 from China (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Arctiinae, Arctiini)
expand article infoYulong Zhang, Siyao Huang, Min Wang
‡ South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
Open Access

Abstract

Background

The 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 information

We herein describe the first record of the genus Olepa from China and re-describe Olepa ricini (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 Olepa schleini Witt et al., 2005 syn. n. is a new synonym of O. ricini.

Keywords

Guangdong, Hainan, molecular analysis, venation, genitalia, synonym

Introduction

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. Subsequently, Orhant (2000) added a new species from north-eastern India and divided the genus Olepa into two species groups, based on differences in male genitalia. 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). Two species, namely O. neumuthi and O. toulgoeti, were treated as the synonyms of O. ricini and O. clavatus, respectively. Recently, Kalawate et al. (Kalawate et al. 2020a, Kalawate et al. 2020b) described further five new taxa from India and restored O. toulgoeti as a valid species. Therefore, 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. However, during a study of the Lepidoptera collection in the South China Agricultural University, we discovered four specimens of this genus that represent the first records of Olepa from China and they belong to the same species, O. ricini. Moreover, based on our molecular and morphology studies, we concluded that O. schleini, which was described from Israel, should be a synonym of O. ricini. Thus, 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.

Materials and methods

Morphological study. We photographed the adults using a Sony DSC-RX100 v1.00 camera. To study the wing venation, the wings were removed from the thorax and cleaned with a 1:1 mixture of bleaching liquid. A Nikon D750 camera was used to photograph the venation. Abdomens were removed and macerated in hot 10% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution for examination of male genitalia, photographs of which were taken under a Keyence VHX-5000 digital microscope. Terminology of adult and genitalia follows Fang (2000).

Molecular phylogenetic analysis. We selected 19 samples representing the species of Olepa as the ingroup and, for the outgroup, we used Trischalis aureoplagiata and Cyclosiella spiralis (two species of the tribe Lithosiini of the subfamily Arctiinae). We sequenced four specimens from China and the remaining sequences were obtained from GenBank and Bold Systems. DNA was extracted from two or three legs of dried adult specimens using a TIANamp Genomic DNA Kit (Tiangen, Guangzhou, China) following the manufacturer’s instructions. We amplified a single mitochondrial gene (a 658-bp fragment of COI) using the general primers 1490-2198 (Folmer et al. 1994). The amplification protocol follows Hou et al. (2021). Sequences were aligned using Clustal W (Thompson 1997) and edited manually using MEGA 7.0 (Kumar et al. 2016). Maximum Likelihood analyses, shown in Fig. 4, were performed using IQ-tree v. 1.6.12 (Trifinopoulos et al. 2016) with the branch support values evaluated by 1000 ultrafast bootstrap (UFBS) replicates (Trifinopoulos et al. 2016) on the web server (http://iqtree.cibiv.univie.ac.at/), the best-fit model used being automatically selected by IQ-TREE (TIM2+F+I chosen according to Bayesian Information Criterion). New sequences have been deposited in GenBank (Table 1).

Table 1.

Voucher information and accession numbers for the specimens in this study.

Taxon Locality Date Voucher Number Accession Number
Olepa ricini China 24-Ⅸ-2020 SCAU Ole01 OK576935
Olepa ricini China 14-Ⅸ-2021 SCAU Ole02 OK576936
Olepa ricini China 1-Ⅹ-2021 SCAU Ole03 OK576937
Olepa ricini China 13-Ⅶ-2020 SCAU Ole04 OK576938
Olepa schleini Israel 19-Ⅶ-2005 DNATAX02723 AM050270*
Olepa schleini Israel 19-Ⅶ-2005 DNATAX02724 AM050271*
Olepa schleini Israel 19-Ⅶ-2005 DNATAX02725 AM050272*
Olepa schleini India 07-Ⅹ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2029 DBFWG011-21+
Olepa schleini India 24-Ⅱ-2019 MOGSJ 03 DBEM003-20+
Olepa schleini India 04-Ⅶ-2019 ZSI_WRC_L_2028 DBFWG004-20+
Olepa suryamal India 07-Ⅹ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2148 DBFWG006-21+
Olepa suryamal India 07-Ⅹ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2149 DBFWG007-21+
Olepa suryamal India 07-Ⅹ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2150 DBFWG012-21+
Olepa zedesi India 23-Ⅷ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2154 DBFWG009-21+
Olepa zedesi India 17-Ⅷ-2017 ZSI_WRC_L_2155 DBFWG010-21+
Olepa ricini India N/A N/A KY559102*
Olepa ricini India 05-ⅩⅡ-2012 RO_Olepric-1 KX371816*
Olepa toulgoeti India 4-Ⅳ-1997 DNATAX02741 AM050285*
Olepa toulgoeti India 4-Ⅳ-1997 DNATAX02742 AM050286*
Trischalis aureoplagiata Australia 15-Ⅲ-1992 10ANIC-00599 HQ921017*
Cyclosiella spiralis Malaysia 18-Ⅴ-2014 BIOUG14394-C09 LEPMY1189+

* Indicates that the gene sequence was downloaded from NCBI, + Indicates that the gene sequence was downloaded from Bold Systems.

Figure 1.  

Adult of Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775) (♂).

Figure 2.  

Wing venation of Olepa ricini.

Figure 3.  

Male genitalia of Olepa ricini. A. lateral view of genitalia capsule; B. genitalia capsule flattened; C. phallus.

Figure 4.  

Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree for the species of Olepa, based on the COI gene. *OK576935 - OK576938 were collected in China.

Taxon treatment

Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)

Nomenclature

Bombyx ricini Fabricius 1775: 583 (Type locality: India)

Alope ricini Moore, 1882: 70

Pericallia ricini Hampson, 1901, 350

Olepa ricini Watson, 1980:133

Olepa (Ricinia) ricini; Singh & Singh, 2013:276

Olepa neumuthi Orhant, 2012:61, synonymised by Singh & Singh, 2013

Olepa schleini Witt et al., 2005:102 (Type locality: Israel, Tel Aviv North), syn. nov.

Materials   Download as CSV 
  1. scientificName:
    Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)
    ; taxonomicStatus:
    accepted
    ; order:
    Lepidoptera
    ; family:
    Erebidae
    ; taxonRank:
    species
    ; genus:
    Olepa
    ; country:
    China
    ; stateProvince:
    Guangdong
    ; county:
    Guangzhou
    ; locality:
    campus of South China Agricultural University
    ; eventDate:
    14-Sep-2021
    ; sex:
    1 male
    ; lifeStage:
    adult
    ; recordedBy:
    S.Y. Huang
    ; occurrenceID:
    SCAU:Ole02
  2. scientificName:
    Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)
    ; taxonomicStatus:
    accepted
    ; order:
    Lepidoptera
    ; family:
    Erebidae
    ; taxonRank:
    species
    ; genus:
    Olepa
    ; country:
    China
    ; stateProvince:
    Guangdong
    ; county:
    Guangzhou
    ; locality:
    campus of South China Agricultural University
    ; eventDate:
    24-Sep-2020
    ; sex:
    1 male
    ; lifeStage:
    adult
    ; recordedBy:
    S.Y. Huang
    ; occurrenceID:
    SCAU:Ole01
  3. scientificName:
    Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)
    ; taxonomicStatus:
    accepted
    ; order:
    Lepidoptera
    ; family:
    Erebidae
    ; taxonRank:
    species
    ; genus:
    Olepa
    ; country:
    China
    ; stateProvince:
    Guangdong
    ; county:
    Guangzhou
    ; locality:
    campus of South China Agricultural University
    ; eventDate:
    1-Oct-2021
    ; sex:
    1 males
    ; lifeStage:
    adult
    ; recordedBy:
    Y.X Hou
    ; occurrenceID:
    SCAU:Ole03
  4. scientificName:
    Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)
    ; taxonomicStatus:
    accepted
    ; order:
    Lepidoptera
    ; family:
    Erebidae
    ; taxonRank:
    species
    ; genus:
    Olepa
    ; country:
    China
    ; stateProvince:
    Hainan
    ; locality:
    Yinggeling Natural Reserve
    ; eventDate:
    13-Jul-2020
    ; sex:
    1 males
    ; lifeStage:
    adult
    ; recordedBy:
    L.P. Zhou
    ; occurrenceID:
    SCAU:Ole04
  5. scientificName:
    Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775)
    ; taxonomicStatus:
    accepted
    ; order:
    Lepidoptera
    ; family:
    Erebidae
    ; taxonRank:
    species
    ; genus:
    Olepa
    ; country:
    China
    ; stateProvince:
    Guangdong
    ; county:
    Guangzhou
    ; locality:
    campus of South China Agricultural University
    ; eventDate:
    14-Oct-2021
    ; sex:
    1 male
    ; lifeStage:
    adult
    ; recordedBy:
    P. Qin
    ; occurrenceID:
    SCAU:Ole05

Description

Male (Fig. 1): Length of forewing 20 mm. Antenna, head and thorax brownish-grey; tegula yellow; patagium covered with brownish-grey hair; abdomen scarlet with elongated black spots of various length on the dorsal side. Forewing ground colour dark brown, with six transverse bands comprised of irregular blackish-brown spots. Cilia chequered. Hind-wing ground colour red with black patterns; antemedian band extending from costal zone to dorsum, gradually narrowing; median band obsolete, extending from costa to upper angle of cell; postmedian band thick, running from costa to tornus and interrupted in cell M2; marginal line serrate, extending from apex to vein CuA1. Venation (Fig. 2): Forewing: Sc free, extending to 2/3 of costa, R1 extending from near the upper corner of the median cell, R2, R3, R4 and R5 stalked, R3 and R4 stalked; M1 extending from the upper corner of the median cell, M2, M3 and CuA1 originating from the lower corner of the median cell; CuA2 originating from almost the mid-point of the cubitus; 1A originating from wing base. Hind-wing: Sc+R1 originating from nearly the mid-point of the upper edge of the median cell; Rs arising beyond the upper angle of the cell, M1 arising just at the upper angle of the cell; M2, M3 and CuA1 all arising near or at the lower angle of the cell; CuA2 arising from nearly the midpoint of cubitus; 2A and 1A free.

Male genitalia (Fig. 3): uncus relatively long and broad and gradually narrowed towards the distal end; tegumen narrow with a semi-oval dorsal plate; juxta shield-like; saccus nearly U-shaped and short; valva moderately broad with its tip curved inwardly; phallus long and slightly S-like curved, carinal plate with a horn-shaped protrusion, vesica broad, with several clusters of small cornuti.

Female: unknown.

Distribution

China (new record), Thailand, India, Israel.

Discussion

The Chinese population of Olepa is morphologically similar to O. schleini and O. ricini. These two species were supposed to be distinguished from each other mainly by the differences in the tip of the valva, i.e. tip rounded in the former and more acute in the latter, together with a great genetic difference in COI sequences (Witt et al. 2005). In addition, another difference was also mentioned in the original description, that is the dark spots on forewing upper side are not surrounded by pale rings in the former, while the pale rings are usually present in the latter. However, based on our examined specimens, we found that the tip of the valva can be quite variable when viewed from different aspects and even flattened, hence we concluded this character cannot be regarded as a stable difference. Moreover, after conducting the BLAST procedure of the COI sequences of O. ricini (GenBank accession numbers AM050280-AM050284) used by Witt et al. (2005) in GenBank, we found that these sequences are actually closer to those of certain species in the family Geometridae rather than other members of Arctiinae of the family Erebidae. It is very likely that these COI sequences of O. ricini are wrong and are not the true ones of this species. This result can also explain why the genetic difference between O. ricini and O. toulgoeti was also as large as 18.2% to 18.5%, but the difference between O. schleini and O. toulgoeti was only 1.6% to 1.8%, despite the fact that O. schleini and O. ricini are morphologically closer. Based on our analysis, 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 also varies from 0.3% to 0.9%. Considering the fact that the genetic difference between the morphologically dissimilar O. ricini and O. toulgoeti is only 1.6% to 1.8% and the difference found between Indian O. ricini and Israeli O. schleini is smaller than 1%, we believe that all the three populations of O. ricini and O. schleini mentioned above should be regarded as conspecific. As for the difference in wing pattern, according to Orhant (1986), the lectotype of O. ricini housed in the Natural History Museum of Denmark is a female without abdomen (plate 1, figs. 4 and 5 in Orhant 1986) and the holotype of O. schleini is a male deposited in Museum Witt Munich, but the adult of this specimen was not specified in the plates in Witt et al. (2005). By comparing the female lectotype of O. ricini and illustrations of males of this species from various publications with males and females of O. schleini figured in Witt et al. (2005), we found no significant difference between these individuals and, interestingly, the pale rings are mostly reduced in the lectotype of O. ricini, similar to the situation in O. schleini. Hence, we concluded that this character is most probably due to individual variation. Thus, we herein present the following synonym: Olepa schleini Witt et al., 2005 syn. n. = Olepa ricini (Fabricius, 1775) and the Chinese Olepa sp. should be also identified as O. ricini.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. XL Fan for guiding the experiment and helping to revise the manuscript, Mr. Hou, Mr. Qin and Mr. Zhou for providing specimens and the Cave Biology Laboratory of South China Agricultural University for taking male genitalia photographs.

References

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