"Taxonomic revision of the tribe Acraeini" (The Debate Continues)
Posted: Sat May 20, 2023 1:42 pm
For those interested in Acraea, Williams & Henning have published a new paper which is largely based on the molecular phylogeny published in this paper in 2021.
Here's the abstract of the new paper:
Here's the abstract of the new paper:
The systematic and taxonomic history of the tribe Acraeini is reviewed. Using a robust dated molecular phylogeny
published in 2021, and combining this with morphological and ecological data-sets, we divided the clearly paraphyletic
genus Acraea (sensu lato) into five genera. We raised the subgenera Rubraea Henning, 1992, Stephenia Henning, 1992
to genera and reinstate Bematistes Hemming, 1935 and Telchinia Hübner, [1819] as valid genera. The genus Tildia
gen. nov. is erected for a monophyletic clade of Acraea (sensu lato), and we treat the Neotropical Actinote and the
Afrotropical Telchinia as separate genera. Because of the relatively low sampling of ‘Telchinia’ species in the dated
molecular phylogeny we suggest that the possibly paraphyletic Telchinia be further investigated using more complete
sampling. We furthermore present an updated alpha taxonomy for the six Afrotropical genera in the tribe – Acraea,
Rubraea stat. nov, Stephenia stat. nov, Tildia gen. nov., Bematistes stat. rev. and Telchinia stat. rev. The current
alpha taxonomy of the New World genus Actinote and the Old World genus Cethosia is given.