Cyrestinae

Cyrestinae is the name of a small subfamily of nymphalid brush-footed butterflies. It is considered to include only three genera - Marpesia, Chersonesia, and Cyrestis - distributed in the tropics.[1]

Cyrestinae
Cyrestis thyodamas
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Nymphalidae
Subfamily: Cyrestinae
Guenée, 1865

Systematics

The circumscription of the Cyrestinae has seen some changes in the recent years, when the former tribes Cyrestini and Pseudergolini were suggested to form a monophyletic clade, and the name was given to the proposed new subfamily,[2] but the tribes were split again later—as two independent subfamilies—as their positions within the Nymphalidae were defined more clearly.[1] It is now considered to be the sister group to the larger subfamily Nymphalinae, and only three genera are included:

Marpesia is Neotropical and Cyrestis and Chersonesia are mainly Oriental with a few species in the Afrotropics.[3]

References
  1. N. Wahlberg , J. Leneveu , U. Kodandaramaiah , C. Peña , S. Nylin , A. V. L. Freitas , and A. V. Z. Brower (2009). Nymphalid butterflies diversify following near demise at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 276: 4295–4302.
  2. Niklas Wahlberg , Elisabet Weingartner , and Sören Nylin (2003). Towards a better understanding of the higher systematics of Nymphalidae (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 28: 473–484.
  3. Wahlberg, Niklas and Andrew V. Z. Brower. (2012). Cyrestinae Guenée 1865. Version 6 August 2012 (temporary). http://tolweb.org/Cyrestinae/69949/2012.08.06 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/


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