@article {702, title = {The effects of Pleistocene glaciations on the phylogeography of Melitaea cinxia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)}, journal = {Eur. J. Entomol.}, volume = {104}, year = {2007}, chapter = {675}, abstract = {

Partial (600 bp) sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene were used to infer the phylogeography of
Melitaea cinxia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) across the entire distributional range of the species, encompassing north Africa and
Eurasia. Cladistic analysis of 49 distinct haplotypes (haplotype and nucleotide diversity were 0.95 and 0.027, respectively) revealed
strong phylogeographic structure in M. cinxia, characterised by four major clades: Morocco; Western (Iberia, France, Italy); Central
(central and northern Western Europe, Balkans, Greece, Anatolia, Levant); and Eastern (eastern Baltic, Urals, Iran, Siberia, China);
separated by average pairwise distances of beween 2 and 6 percent. This pattern is consistent with the location of southern glacial
refugia in the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas, as well as multiple eastern refugia. The Western clade is further structured into
south-central Iberian, northern Iberian (and French) and southern Italian sub-clades; and the Eastern clade into Near Eastern and Far
Eastern sub-clades; with weaker phylogeographical concordance within the Central clade, except for a large area in central and
northern Western Europe which is monomorphic for COI haplotype. The Baltic and eastern Europe have been primarily colonized
by the Far Eastern sub-clade, rather than the Central (Balkan) clade, highlighting the importance of including Near and Far Eastern
populations in phylogeographic studies of Palearctic species. Maps showing the extent of clades and sub-clades suggest several
regions of secondary contact and possible hybridization. Interspecific comparison of representative M. cinxia haplotypes supports a
monophyletic origin of all M. cinxia.

}, keywords = {cytochrome oxidase I, Lepidoptera, Palearctic, Phylogeography}, author = {Niklas Wahlberg and Ilik Saccheri} } @article {684, title = {Varying rates of diversification in the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) during the past 20 million years}, journal = {Biological Journal of the Linnean Society}, volume = {97}, year = {2009}, chapter = {346}, abstract = {

The influence of Quarternary glacial cycles on the extant diversity of Holarctic species has been intensively studied.
It has been hypothesized that palaeoclimatic changes are responsible for divergence events in lineages. A constant
improvement in DNA sequencing and modeling methods, as well as palaeoclimatic reconstruction, permit a deeper
exploration of general causes of speciation in geological time. In the present study, we sampled, as exhaustively as
possible, the butterflies belonging to the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), which are widely spread in
the Palaearctic region. We conducted analyses to assess the phylogeny of the genus and estimated the timing of
divergence and the most likely distribution of ancestral populations. The results obtained indicate that the
systematics of the genus is in need of revision and that the diversity of the genus has been profoundly shaped by
palaeoenvironmental changes during its evolutionary history. The present study also emphasizes that, when
employed with caveats, major palaeoenvironmental events could represent very powerful tools for the calibration
of the dating of divergences using molecular data.

}, keywords = {colonization {\textendash} divergence time {\textendash} palaeoclimate {\textendash} speciation rate {\textendash} systematic}, author = {Julien Leveneu and Anton Chichvarkhin and Niklas Wahlberg} }