A new skipper butterfly from Panama and Colombia with its genome (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae: Eudaminae)

Abstract We name and describe a new butterfly species in the family Hesperiidae (Lepidoptera), Fulvatis regalodelcielo sp. nov. from Panama and Colombia. In addition to generating mitochondrial and draft nuclear genome assemblies for the type series, we utilized available whole-genome sequencing data and reconciled a species tree using a full-likelihood multispecies coalescent method, as well as producing two concatenated maximum-likelihood trees from nuclear and mitochondrial genome datasets. All three phylogenetic hypotheses recovered F. regalodelcielo sp. nov. as a member of the tribe Phocidini (Eudaminae) with a high support. Fulvatis regalodelcielo sp. nov. is most closely related to Fulvatis fulvius (Plötz, 1882). Coalescent-based species tree analysis suggests that these two taxa diverged less than 1 million years ago. We provide diagnostic morphological characters for congeneric species and designate a lectotype for Telegonus fulvius Plötz, 1882 to remove any ambiguity regarding its identity. We draw attention to both advantage and disadvantage of generating classification schemes based on genomic data, and highlight the importance of biological classification as a tool to effectively communicate about the diversity of life.