Cyrestinae Explained

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]

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:

• Cyrestis
• Chersonesia
• Marpesia

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

Notes and 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/