Phystis fontus (A. Hall, 1928), 2021

Phystis fontus (A. Hall, 1928) , new combination

Phystis variegata (Röber, 1913) and Phystis pratti (A. Hall, 1935) are species distinct from Phystis simois (Hewitson, 1864)

Confident paraphyly of the species Phystis simois (Hewitson, 1864) ( type locality Brazil, Fig. 47 left and right) with respect to Phystis fontus (A. Hall, 1928) ,

comb. n. was one of the more unsettling results in this project (Fig. 48). However, COI barcodes of the two subspecies Phystis simois pratti (A. Hall, 1935) (type locality North Peru, Fig. 47 left) and Phystis simois variegata (Röber, 1913) (type locality Argentina, Fig. 47 right) differ by 6.4% (42 bp), which is more than the difference between some of the Higgins genera ( Higgins 1981), see above. Inspection of specimens (Fig. 47 left and right) reveals marked difference in wing shapes of the two subspecies, not commonly found within species. Therefore, these two subspecies are species that are also distinct from the nominotypical Phystis simois (Hewitson, 1864) (type locality Brazil) due to phenotypic differences and COI barcode differences (7.1% & 8.1%) between our specimens and P. simois available from GenBank (accession EF493956 View Materials ) ( Wahlberg and Freitas 2007). Hence, the names for these species are Phystis variegata (Röber, 1913) stat. nov. and Phystis pratti (A. Hall, 1935) stat. nov. We have not studied Phyciodes chinchipensis Hayward, 1964 (type locality Peru: Rio Chinchipe) currently treated as a subspecies of P. simois . Nevertheless, examination of the holotype photographs ( Warren et al. 2016) suggests that it is not P. simois . Due to wing pattern resemblance and locality (both are from North Peru), we tentatively place it as a subspecies of P. pratti instead, keeping in mind that it may be a distinct species and not a mere color variation.