Melitaea telona

Melitaea telona
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Lepidoptera
Family:	Nymphalidae
Genus:	Melitaea
Species:	M. telona
Binomial name
Melitaea telona (Fruhstorfer, 1908)[1]

Melitaea telona is a butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. The species rank of Melitaea telona (type location Jerusalem, Israel) was only very recently recognised in two publications by Russell, et al. in 2005 and 2007. It has a disjunct distribution from the Levant across Asia Minor and the Balkans to southern Italy and Sicily and to the Carpathian basin.

Its separation from Melitaea phoebe was mostly based on larval characters. M. telona larvae have a brick red head from the fourth larval instar and they are monophagous, feeding on different Asteraceae species, mainly on regionally different, mostly local endemic Centaurea species. M. phoebe on the other hand is oligophagous and its head capsule is always black. Russell et al. suggested that the name punica was erroneously used by many taxonomists as a senior synonym of telona. Thus, Melitaea punica (Type location Lambessa, Algeria) occurs in North Africa only. These results were also confirmed by genetic studies based on the analysis of one mitochondrial and two nuclear genes in several species of the M. phoebe-group by Leneveu, et al. in 2009 and also by enzyme electrophoresis in the case of M. phoebe and M. telona kovacsi (a Hungarian subspecies) by Pecsenye, et al. in 2007.

References

1. ^ Melitaea at funet

• Julie Leneneviu,Anton Chichvarkhin and Niklas Wahlberg Varying rates of diversification in the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) during the past 20 million years
• János Pál Tóth, Zoltán Varga Morphometric study on the genitalia of sibling species Melitaea phoebe and M. telona (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)
• Russell, P., Tennent, W.J., Pateman, J., Varga, Z., Benyamini, D., Pe’er, G., Bálint, Z. & Gascoigne-Pees, M. (2007) Further investigations into Melitaea telona Frushstorfer, 1908 (=ogygia Frushstorfer, 1908 =emipunica Verity, 1919) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), with observations on biology and distribution. Entomologist's Gazette, 58, 137-166.
• Russell, P., J., P., Gascoigne-Pees, M. & Tennent, W.J. (2005) Melitaea emipunia (Verity, 1919) stat. nov: a hitherto unrecognised butterfly species from Europe (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Entomologist's Gazette, 56, 67-70.
• Pecsenye, K., Bereczki, J., Tóth, A., Meglécz, E., Peregovits, L., Juhász, E. & Varga, Z. (2007) A poulációstruktúra és a genetikai variabilitás kapcsolata védett nappalilepke-fajainknál. In: A Kárpát-medence állatvilágának kialakulása. MTM, Budapest, pp. 241-260.