Re-establishment of Spodoptera teferii Laporte in Rougeot (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae, Noctuinae), with an updated molecular phylogeny for the genus Spodoptera Guenée

The genus Spodoptera Guenée (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae, Noctuinae) is a group of economic importance which encompasses several major pests of crops worldwide. Although this genus has been the focus of many studies, the status of several Spodoptera species is still unstable, especially in the light of recent molecular analyses. In 2015 five Spodoptera specimens collected in Ethiopia were first identified as S. apertura (Walker). However, preliminary studies suggested that these specimens belong to a distinct species, S. teferii Laporte in Rougeot, which has been previously synonymized with S. apertura. In this study, on the basis of morphological and molecular evidence, we re-establish the species status of S. teferii. We provide a supplemental description of S. teferii male and the first description of S. teferii female. We also conducted several molecular analyses. First, we reconstructed an updated phylogeny for the genus based on a multilocus dataset (four mitochondrial and three nuclear gene fragments) including S. teferii and 28 of the 31 currently recognized Spodoptera species; the results of phylogenetic analyses support the hypothesis that S. teferii is more closely related to the clade encompassing S. littoralis (Boisduval), S. litura (Fabricius), S. pectinicornis (Hampson) and S. picta (Guérin-Méneville) than to S. apertura. Second, we carried out molecular species delimitation analyses on a 683-specimen dataset that also clearly support the status of S. teferii as a species distinct to S. apertura.