The diverse butterfly subtribe Euptychiina contains more than 400 species in Central and South American habitats ranging from rainforest to cerrado. Hundreds of thousands of euptychiine specimens in natural history museum collections hold untapped data for studies in many fields, but almost half of all specimens are difficult to confidently identify. At least 20% of species have no scientific name and 65% of genera are invalid. This project has 5 main goals: (1) to combine morphological and DNA data to produce a comprehensive evolutionary hypothesis for the subtribe and define genera; (2) to revise the classification for 9 genera containing 159 species (35 to be named), and to name an additional 21+ species in other Euptychiina genera; (3) to train butterfly researchers at the University of Florida and at the University of Campinas, Brazil; (4) to test hypotheses about Euptychiina evolution; (5) and to develop collection and web-based electronic resources to facilitate future research.
The project will provide a reliable classification and understanding of species diversity in Euptychiina and use these to begin to investigate how these organisms diversified and what factors control their current distribution, helping to predict how changing land use and climate are likely to impact their diversity.The project will train 1 post-doctoral researcher, 3 graduate students and other university and high-school students, with special efforts to include minorities. Museum collections will be enhanced and an NSF-funded, web-based informatics platform for storage and rapid sharing of taxonomic data will be adapted for use by the team and for future butterfly researchers. The project website will provide biological data, images and publications, and data will also be available to online biodiversity initiatives such as GBIF, EoL and iDigBio where they will be freely accessible. Finally, the project will be featured for one year and to more than 200,000 visitors as a component of the Florida Museum of Natural History's "Library of Life" exhibit, highlighting current research at the museum.
