A new species of the butterfly genus Melitaea has been discovered in northern Israel, according to a paper published in the journal Comparative Cytogenetics.
The Acentria’s fritillary (Melitaea acentria), female, Mt. Hermon (1,800 m), Israel, May 7, 2016. Image credit: V. Lukhtanov, doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v11i2.12370.
Butterflies of the genus Melitaea are distributed throughout the warm and temperate part of the Palearctic region and occupy a wide range of habitat types, including meadows, grasslands, steppe, alpine biotopes, arid mountains and deserts.
The new Melitaea species, named the Acentria’s fritillary (Melitaea acentria), was found by entomologist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Vladimir Lukhtanov on the slopes of the popular Mt. Hermon ski resort, Israel.
“This is the first new butterfly species discovered and described from the territory of Israel in 109 years,” said Dr. Lukhtanov, an associate researcher in Entomology Department at Harvard University.
“To me, it was a surprise that no one had already discovered it,” he added.
“Thousands of people had observed and many had even photographed this beautifully colored butterfly, yet no one recognized it as a separate species.”
“The lepidopterists had been sure that the Hermon samples belonged to the common species called the Persian fritillary (Melitaea persea), because of their similar appearance, but nobody made the effort to study their internal anatomy and DNA,” Dr. Lukhtanov said.
The Acentria’s fritillary is known to occur at high altitudes (1,730-2,060 m above the sea level) of Mt. Hermon and is believed to be endemic to northern Israel and the neighboring territories of Syria and Lebanon.
“The species is probably one of a handful of butterflies known to have arisen through hybridization between two other species in the past,” Dr. Lukhtanov said.
“This process is known to be common in plants, but scientists have only recently realized it might also be present in butterflies.”
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V.A. Lukhtanov. 2017. A new species of Melitaea from Israel, with notes on taxonomy, cytogenetics, phylogeography and interspecific hybridization in the Melitaea persea complex (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae). Comparative Cytogenetics 11 (2): 325-357; doi: 10.3897/CompCytogen.v11i2.12370
