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Annotated checklist of the moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Canada and Alaska

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Abstract

A definitive species list is the foundation of biodiversity and conservation work. As we deal with massive climatic changes in the Anthropocene, knowing which species make up our diverse ecosystems will be critically important if we wish to protect and restore them. The Lepidoptera, moths and butterflies, are the fourth-largest insect order in terms of global diversity, with approximately 158,000 described species. Here we report the distributions of 5431 species that occur in Canada and Alaska, as well as 53 species that have been reported from the region but not yet verified. Additionally, 19 species are listed as interceptions or unsuccessful introductions, and 52 species are listed as probably occurring in the region. The list is based on records from taxonomic papers, historical regional checklists, and specimen data from collections and online databases. All valid species and their synonyms, and all Nearctic subspecies and synonyms are included, except for butterfly subspecies (and their synonyms) that have never been reported from the region. The list is presented in taxonomic order, with the author, date of description, and original genus provided for each name.
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... Thus, the problem of species delimitation under allopatry is widespread but addressed mostly in connection with smaller geographic scales (Lukhtanov et al. 2015, Wagner et al. 2017, Georges et al. 2018, Dincă et al. 2019. For example, the number of Holarctic terrestrial insect species is counted in thousands (Langor and Sheffield 2019), as in Lepidoptera alone, there are several hundred (Pohl et al. 2018, own data). The taxonomy of many Holarctic species has been unstable because the degree of differentiation observed between the allopatric populations is highly variable, rendering their delimitation often challenging (Kerr et al. 2009, Landry et al. 2013. ...
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... Lepidopteran nomenclature follows Pohl et al. (2018) primarily and GBIF.org (Global Biodiversity Information Facility 2021) secondarily. ...
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Delimitation of allopatric populations into species remains subjective and largely arbitrary. Many cold-adapted species from the subarctic and Central and Southern European Mountain systems display frequent allopatry with disjunct distributions of their populations. The same concerns Holarctic species which are many and which almost regularly show various degrees of differentiation between the continents. In this study, we analyze high-throughput target enrichment data for ten groups of arctic-alpine and Holarctic lepidopteran species sampled from four main regions across the Holarctic realm: Fennoscandia, North America, Alps and Altai. We first aimed to assess whether the genetic differences in the nuclear genome reflect observed DNA barcode divergences and second, whether the gap between population and species-level differences can be dissected using genomic data. We compared the phylogenetic trees and uncorrected pairwise genetic distances obtained from target enrichment and the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) barcodes for each of the study species. Additionally, we also performed a suite of population genetic and species delimitation analyses to further shed light on patterns of intraspecific variation using a large number of nuclear markers. We observed that in about one half of the cases, DNA barcodes tended to show phylogenetic relationships similar to the target enrichment markers. We report varying levels of nuclear genetic differentiation among the populations analyzed, starting from low differentiation of geographically separated populations to the deeper separation of some Nearctic population and further arctic-alpine disjunction. Given that no single consistent pattern emerged across different case studies, we demonstrate that the delimitation of allopatric populations into species could be done much more efficiently and in a consistent manner if based on a large set of universal genetic loci, which would help in reaching standards for taxonomic delimitation of allopatric populations.
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