Detecting cryptic species in sympatry and allopatry: analysis of hidden diversity in Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae)

Modern multilocus molecular techniques are a powerful tool in the detection and analysis of cryptic taxa. However, its shortcoming is that with allopatric populations it reveals phylogenetic lineages, not biological species. The increasing power of coalescent multilocus analysis leads to the situation in which nearly every geographically isolated or semi‐isolated population can be identified as a lineage and therefore raised to species rank. It leads to artificial taxonomic inflation and as a consequence creates an unnecessary burden on the conservation of biodiversity. To solve this problem, we suggest combining modern lineage delimitation techniques with the biological species concept. We discuss several explicit principles on how genetic markers can be used to detect cryptic entities that have properties of biological species (i.e. of actually or potentially reproductively isolated taxa). Using these principles we rearranged the taxonomy of the butterfly species close to Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) ripartii. The subgenus Agrodiaetus is a model system in evolutionary research, but its taxonomy is poorly elaborated because, as a rule, most of its species are morphologically poorly differentiated. The taxon P. (A.) valiabadi has been supposed to be one of the few exceptions from this rule due to its accurately distinguishable wing pattern. We discovered that in fact traditionally recognized P. valiabadi is a triplet of cryptic species, strongly differentiated by their karyotypes and mitochondrial haplotypes.