Species phylogeny of the subgenus Parides (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) based in sequences of citochrome Oxidase I gene

Parides Hübner is a terminal taxon of Troidini, an aposematic butterfly group that is diverse in the tropics and subtropics, and a model of mullerian and batesian mimetic complexes. Several American species of Parides are sympatric and include populations with intraspecific variation in color pattern, thus creating confusion on their taxonomic status, mainly in Colombia where the biota of North and South America converge. This work presents a phylogenetic hypothesis of these butterflies and proposes a more robust definition of some taxa. For this, 15 taxa of the subgenus Parides were analyzed as in- group; species of other two genera of Troidini, closer to Parides, were used as out-group. DNA was extracted using the Pascual et al. (1997) protocol and Quiagen DNAeasy kit. A terminal fragment of Cytochrome Oxidase I gen (476 bp) were amplified. We obtained a phylogenetic approximation using maximum parsimony and evaluated the branch support with Jackknife and absolute Bremer support. We also conducted a bayesian analysis. The resulting phylogenetic hypothesis suggested that Parides is a paraphyletic group; the molecular evidence support one species and five subspecies. The analyzed taxa were divided in three principal groups coincident with the Lysander (group 1) and Aeneas (groups 1 and 2) groups proposed by Rothschild and Jordan (1906).