PROC. ENTOMOL. SOC. WASH. 85(2), 1983, pp. 335-358 SUPERSPECIES ATRYTONOPSIS OVINIA {A. OVINIA PLUS A. EDWARDSI) AND THE NONADAPTIVE NATURE OF INTERSPECIFIC GENITALIC DIFFERENCES (LEPIDOPTERA: HESPERIIDAE) John M. Burns Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560. ^fo?rac?. — Superspecies Atrytonopsis ovinia comprises A. ovinia (Nicaragua to central Mexico) and A. edwardsi (central Mexico to Texas and Arizona); zaovinia is a synonym of ovinia; rupilius, a nomen dubium. Characters of size, antenna, sex behavior, stigma, facies, genitalia, and temporal and spatial distribution define this superspecies; the most distinctive are wing shape and genital characters in-volving the uncus, aedeagus, and ductus bursae. Wing length and number of segments in the nudum of the antenna vary independently; the former is sexually dimorphic, but the latter is not. (Sexual dimorphism in wing length is greater in A. edwardsi than it is in A. lunus, even though lunus is the larger species.) Those morphologic characters that best separate ovinia from edwardsi are secondary sex characters: the stigma and some subtle differences in male (uncus) and female (lamella postvaginalis) genitalia. In each of these allopatric and discontinuously distributed species, these (and other) characters show lots of individual— but not geographic— variation. The slight genitalic differences between ovinia and ed-wardsi give no evidence of having been directly selected. Such taxonomically useful differences may often be nonadaptive. The data support a punctuational model of speciation. Atrytonopsis is a compact genus of a dozen species centered in the southwestern United States and Mexico. North of Mexico, it does not approach the West Coast, though it spreads clear to the East Coast via hianna (Scudder), which stretches northward to southeastern Saskatchewan and New England, and loammi (Whit-ney), which replaces hianna mainly in Florida. Defined by Godman in 1900 with Hesperia deva Edwards as its type, Atrytonopsis has a distinctive shape that stems primarily from the pointed forewings of males. I started reviewing Atrytonopsis when I saw that Lychnuchoides frappenda Dyar must be switched to it. This seemingly big shift, from Evans' (1955) K or Carystus Group to his N or Lerodea Group, significantly extended the range of variation in facies (though not in genitalic or other morphology) of Atrytonopsis (Bums, 1982). Atrytonopsis frappenda clusters tightly with lunus (Edwards) and zweifeli Freeman to form the lunus group, a trio of species that looks, from limited locality data, like a superspecies occurring from southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico to central Mexico. I now delimit superspecies A. ovinia whose com-
Superspecies Atrytonopsis ovinia (Atrytonopsis ovinia Plus Atrytonopsis edwardsi) And The Nonadaptive Nature Of Interspecific Genitalic Differences (Lepidoptera, Hesperiidae)
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