Kingdom Animalia Subfamily Nymphalinae Scientific name Melitaea Higher classification Melitaeina Order Butterflies and moths | Family Nymphalidae Tribe Melitaeini Phylum Arthropoda Rank Genus | |
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Subtribe Melitaeina
Newman, 1870 Lower classifications Heath fritillary, Glanville fritillary, False‑heath fritillary | ||
Melitaea athalia
Melitaea is a genus of brush-footed butterflies (family Nymphalidae). They are here placed in the tribe Melitaeini of subfamily Nymphalinae; some authors elevate this tribe to subfamily rank.
Contents
As delimited here, Melitaea includes the genus Mellicta, making the subtribe Melitaeina monotypic (but see below). For long, it was believed that Mellicta was a junior objective synonym of Melitaea, sharing the same type species (the Glanville Fritillary, M. cinxia). This was in error, however; the type species of Mellicta is actually the Heath Fritillary (M. athalia), making the two taxa junior subjective synonyms and thus eligible to be separated again. However, several other taxa are in fact objective synonyms (or at least have type specimens belonging to the same biological species) of Melitaea and Mellicta – Schoenis and the preoccupied Lucina and Melinaea for the former, Athaliaeformia for the latter.
The glanville fritillary melitaea cinxia
Species
As noted above, Mellicta is considered to be a subgenus of Melitaea for the time being. The rationale is that even though the Melitaeina may not be monotypic, they do not seem to consist of just two genera (Melitaea and Mellicta) either, and recognition of Mellicta appears to leave Melitaea paraphyletic; consequently, other lineages would need elevation to distinct genus status also. As long as it is not fully known which species groups and/or subgenera warrant recognition as full genera, they are all retained in the present genus.
In the following list, species-group/subgenus affiliation and type species are annotated. In the sensu lato circumscription used here, Melitaea contains almost 90 species. Most being assignable to one of the 5 groups/subgenera, there are a few that cannot be clearly placed with one of these at present:
Mellicta group
Incertae sedis
