title: Comparative molecular species delimitation in the charismatic Nawab butterflies (Nymphalidae, Charaxinae, Polyura).
abstract: The charismatic tropical Polyura Nawab butterflies are distributed across twelve biodiversity hotspots in the Indomalayan/Australasian archipelago. In this study, we tested an array of species delimitation methods and compared the results to existing morphology-based taxonomy. We sequenced two mitochondrial and two nuclear gene fragments to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships within Polyura using both Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood. Based on this phylogenetic framework, we used the recently introduced bGMYC, BPP and PTP methods to investigate species boundaries. Based on our results, we describe two new species Polyura paulettae Toussaint sp. n. and Polyura smilesi Toussaint sp. n., propose one synonym, and five populations are raised to species status. Most of the newly recognized species are single-island endemics likely resulting from the recent highly complex geological history of the Indomalayan-Australasian archipelago. Surprisingly, we also find two newly recognized species in the Indomalayan region where additional biotic or abiotic factors have fostered speciation. Species delimitation methods were largely congruent and succeeded to cross-validate most extant morphological species. PTP and BPP seem to yield more consistent and robust estimations of species boundaries with respect to morphological characters while bGMYC delivered contrasting results depending on the different gene trees considered. Our findings demonstrate the efficiency of comparative approaches using molecular species delimitation methods on empirical data. They also pave the way for the investigation of less well-known groups to unveil patterns of species richness and catalogue Earth's concealed, therefore unappreciated diversity.
authors.affiliation: SNSB-Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Münchhausenstraße 21, 81247 Munich, Germany. Electronic address: Toussaint@ku.edu.
authors.forename: Emmanuel F A
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Toussaint
authors.affiliation: SNSB-Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Münchhausenstraße 21, 81247 Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Morinière
authors.affiliation: Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.
authors.forename: Chris J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: National Center for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru 560065, India.
authors.forename: Krushnamegh
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kunte
authors.affiliation: 14, Résidence du Nouveau Parc, 78570 Andrésy, France.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Turlin
authors.affiliation: SNSB-Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Münchhausenstraße 21, 81247 Munich, Germany; GeoBioCenter, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hausmann
authors.affiliation: SNSB-Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Münchhausenstraße 21, 81247 Munich, Germany; GeoBioCenter, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Balke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D044822:Biodiversity; D002080:Butterflies / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
keywords: Australasian–Indomalayan archipelago; BPP; Charaxini; Cryptic diversity; Poisson Tree Processes; bGMYC