Eur. J. Entomol. 122: 249-278, 2025 | DOI: 10.14411/eje.2025.031

Phylogeny of the genus Amerila (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Amerilini), with remarks on male genitalia and descriptions of new species from Africa and IndonesiaOriginal article

Nikolai IGNATEV ORCID...1, Gyula M. LÁSZLÓ ORCID...2, Günter C. MÜLLER ORCID...3, Harald SULAK ORCID...4, Roman YAKOVLEV ORCID...5, Zdeněk FALTÝNEK FRIC ORCID...6, 7
1 Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Entomology I Department, Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; e-mail: nikolai.ignatev@senckenberg.de
2 African Natural History Research Trust, Street Court, Kingsland, Leominster, Herefordshire, HR6 9QA, UK; e-mail: gyulalaszlo@anhrt.org.uk
3 University of Sciences, Techniques and Technology of Bamako, BP 1805, Bamako, Mali; e-mail: guntercmuller@hotmail.com
4 Museum Witt, Max-Reger-Straße 18, 92637 Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Germany; e-mail: h.sulak@atelier-sulak.de
5 Altai State University, Lenina pr. 61, Barnaul, 656049, Russia; Tomsk State University, Lenina pr. 36, 634050, Tomsk, Russia, Western Caspian University, 31, Istiglaliyyat Street, Baku, Azerbaijan; e-mail: yakovlev_asu@mail.ru
6 Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre CAS, Branišovská 31, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic; e-mail: fric@entu.cas.cz
7 Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Praha-Suchdol, Czech Republic

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct the phylogeny of the Palaeotropical arctiine genus Amerila Walker, 1855 through investigations of ancestral distribution and co-evolution of wing patterns linked with mimicry, as well as analyses of genetic and genital morphological traits. We perform analyses of molecular data available from previous studies combined with DNA sequences obtained during this research, a total of 3894 bp for 48 species using one mitochondrial (COI) and six nuclear markers (EF-1α, GAPDH, RpS5, wingless, arginine kinase, and ATP). We analysed the data using two probabilistic methods: Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Inference. Among the known species-group taxa, we include for the first time in a phylogenetic analysis the species A. accra (Strand), A. bauri Möschler, A. bipartita (Rothschild), A. brunnea bipartitoides Häuser & Boppré, A. puella carneola (Hampson), A. castanea (Hampson), A. invidua (Bethune-Baker), A. leucoptera (Hampson), A. lupia (Druce), A. madagascariensis (Boisduval), A. nigrivenosa (Grünberg), A. puella (Fabricius), A. roseomarginata (Rothschild) and A. vitrea saalmuelleri (Rothschild). We describe two new species: A. florinae Ignatev, sp. n. from Bacan island (Indonesia) and A. smithi László, sp. n. from Zambia, the latter included in the phylogenetic analyses. We raise A. brunnea bipartitoides, A. vitrea saalmuelleri and A. puella carneola to species rank: A. bipartitoides stat. rev., A. saalmuelleri stat. rev., A. carneola stat. rev. We illustrate the habitus and the male and female genitalia of most of the taxa presented in this paper.

Keywords: Evolution, integrative taxonomy, morphological characters, systematics

Received: January 10, 2025; Revised: July 4, 2025; Accepted: July 4, 2025; Published online: October 7, 2025  Show citation

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IGNATEV, N., LÁSZLÓ, G.M., MÜLLER, G.C., SULAK, H., YAKOVLEV, R., & FALTÝNEK FRIC, Z. (2025). Phylogeny of the genus Amerila (Lepidoptera: Erebidae: Arctiinae: Amerilini), with remarks on male genitalia and descriptions of new species from Africa and Indonesia. EJE, 122, Article 249-278. https://doi.org/10.14411/eje.2025.031
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