Lycaenidae

Family Lycaenidae View in CoL [Leach], [1815]

Sandia Clench & P. Ehrlich, 1960 and Xamia Clench, 1961 are junior subjective synonyms of Incisalia Scudder, 1872

Appearance could be misleading, especially if unusual. Despite unique wing patterns, we find from the genomic analysis that Sandia Clench & P. Ehrlich, 1960 ( type and the only species Callophrys ( Sandia) mcfarlandi P. Ehrlich & Clench, 1960 ) originates within Deciduphagus K. Johnson, 1992 ( type species Thecla augustinus Westwood, 1852 ), and is sister to Callophrys fotis (Strecker, [1878]) (Fig. 13). Because Deciduphagus is currently a junior subjective synonym of Incisalia Scudder, 1872 ( type species Lycus niphon Hübner, [1819] ) ( Pelham 2008; Pelham 2020) due to evolutionary closeness, and because Sandia renders both Deciduphagus and Incisalia paraphyletic, we propose that Sandia is a junior subjective synonym of Incisalia . Furthermore, uniquely patterned Xamia Clench, 1961 ( type species Thecla xami Reakirt, [1867] ) also originates within Deciduphagus and is sister to the Deciduphagus core group that contains the type species.

Although Xamia is more distant from other congeners than Sandia,

it still falls within the prominent

Incisalia clade. Thus leaving it as a valid subgenus would require a new name for at least Callophrys polios (Cook & F. Watson, 1907) ,

which is sister to the clade Fig. 13. Callophrys subgenera: subgen. Greenie n. (red), Cisincisalia (pink), consisting of Xamia and the core Callophrys (blue), Mitoura (olive), and Incisalia (green) with its synonyms Deciduphagus species, but is not Deciduphagus (cyan), Xamia (orange), and Sandia (magenta). prominently distinct from its relatives. Therefore, we propose to treat Xamia as a junior subjective synonym of Incisalia . Finally, we note that Deciduphagus as originally defined (Fig. 13 cyan) ( Johnson 1992) is also paraphyletic with respect to Incisalia (Fig. 13 green), and Callophrys henrici (Grote & Robinson, 1867) with Callophrys irus (Godart, [1824]) should be attributed to Incisalia sensu stricto instead of to Deciduphagus . As a result of this analysis (Fig. 13), we conclude that the genus Callophrys diversified into 5 prominent clades that correspond to the level of subgenus: Callophrys , Incisalia , Cisincisalia K. Johnson, 1992 ( type species Cisincisalia moecki K. Johnson, 1992 , a junior subjective synonym of Callophrys guatemalena Clench, 1981 ), Mitoura Scudder, 1872 ( type species Thecla smilacis Boisduval & Le Conte, [1835] ) and the fifth subgenus that includes Nearctic species superficially similar to Palearctic Callophrys , but instead is a confidently supported sister to Incisalia (Fig. 13 red) ( ten Hagen and Miller 2010). This subgenus does not have a name available for it and therefore is new.