Parsons et al. (1999) listed 61 species of Eupithecia with type locality in Chile; four others were added later (Parra and Ibarra-Vidal 2002; Vargas 2011). Most of the Chilean Eupithecia occur in the central and southern zones of the country (Vojnits 1985, 1992, 1994; Rindge 1987, 1991). In contrast, only five species have been recorded in the extremely arid environments of the northernmost part, at about 18–19°S, only one of which is known to occur in the highlands of the Andes (Rindge 1987; Vargas 2011). Adults of a second high-elevation species were recently collected in northern Chile. The examination of their genitalia revealed that the moths represent an undescribed species, whose description is provided here. DNA barcodes of one female and one male were used to confirm conspecificity.
Material and methods
The studied specimens were collected using a light trap in December, 2020 in the Copaquilla ravine (18°23'55"S, 69°37'49"W) at about 2800 m elevation on the western slopes of the Andes. Their abdomens were removed, cleared in hot KOH 10% for a few minutes, stained with Eosin Y and Chlorazol black and slide-mounted with Euparal. Images were captured with a Sony CyberShot DSC-HX200V digital camera attached to a Leica M125 stereo microscope and a Micropublisher 3.3 RTVQImaging digital camera, attached to an Olympus BX51 microscope. The distribution map was generated using SimpleMappr (Shorthouse 2010). Specimens will be deposited in the “Colección Entomológica de la Universidad de Tarapacá”, Arica, Chile (IDEA).
Genomic DNA was extracted from legs of one female and one male using the QIAamp Fast DNA Tissue Kit, following the manufacturer’s instructions, and sent to Macrogen Inc. (Seoul, South Korea) for purification, PCR amplification and sequencing of the barcode region (Hebert et al. 2003) using the primers (LEP-F1 and LEP-R1) and following the procedures described in Hebert et al. (2004). The sequences were aligned with ClustalW in MEGA X (Kumar et al. 2018) to search for variable sites and were analyzed using the BOLD Identification System (Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007).
Results
DNA barcodes
Two identical DNA barcode sequences of 658 base pair length were obtained, confirming the conspecificity of the male and the female analyzed (GenBank accessions MZ821652, MZ821653, respectively). The nearest match in BOLD (98.6% similarity) was with one sequence of Eupithecia from Antofagasta, Chile, at “Private” status. The following nearest match (93.9%) was with “Lepidoptera sp. 049 PS-2011” from Ecuador.
Eupithecia copaquillaensis sp. nov.
http://zoobank.org/A4BD2F1B-22C7-4CBF-9A89-138C7D3B9058
Figs 1–7
Type material. Holotype, male, Chile: Chile, Parinacota, Copaquilla, 2800 m.; December 2020; light trap; H.A. Vargas leg.; IDEA-LEPI-2021-007; genitalia slide HAV-1415. Specimen and genitalia slide deposited at IDEA.
Paratypes, Chile. Three males, IDEA-LEPI-2021-008, IDEA-LEPI-2021-009, IDEA-LEPI-2021-010, genitalia slide 1408, 1409, 1473, respectively, three females IDEA-LEPI-2021-011, IDEA-LEPI-2021-012, IDEA-LEPI-2021-013, genitalia slides 1410, 1417, 1434, respectively, same data as for holotype. Specimens and genitalia slides deposited at IDEA.
