A species of moth that was first described in 1818 was believed to be a single species. However, it has since been discovered that it is actually a complex of species, eight of which are found in Brazil. These findings are the result of a study that integrated molecular techniques, morphological data, and the identification of host plants from populations in the Amazon, Atlantic Forest, and Pantanal regions.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports by researchers from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the University of São Paulo (USP).
"The study shows how integrating different techniques is important in species description, highlighting how state-of-the-art methods are welcome, but not necessarily enough, to bring a new species to the attention of science," says Simeão de Souza Moraes , the coordinator of the study and a researcher at UNICAMP's Institute of Biology.
"Moreover, the process of choosing names has an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist nature by naming the new species using references from Afro-Brazilian culture, which runs counter to a very common practice in the nomenclature process of using names for organisms of the Neotropical fauna that reference the culture of the Global North, such as Greek and Roman gods," he adds.
The tiny brownish moths, measuring about two centimeters from wing tip to wing tip, were all previously known as Eois russearia. What was once considered a single species actually represents a complex of several species, eight of which are found in Brazil. Seven were named after Orixás from Candomblé and Umbanda, and one was named in honor of a co-author of the study who passed away before its publication.
Eois iemanja and E. ibeji are found along the banks of the Mogi Guaçu River in the municipality of the same name in the state of São Paulo. This area marks the transition from the Atlantic Forest to the Cerrado, a Brazilian savanna biome. E. nanan and E. iogunede occur in the Pantanal; the specimens used for their description were collected in Aquidauana, a municipality in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
On the outskirts of Manaus in the state of Amazonas, E. oxumare, E. orumila, E. iroco, and E. stantonae were described. The latter was named in honor of Mariana Alves Stanton , a researcher at the USP Institute of Chemistry who passed away in 2024 while working on the study.
These new descriptions improve our understanding of the diversity of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) in Brazil and the ecological interactions of these insects with Piper genus plants, which may involve the uptake of secondary compounds – natural molecules with potential biotechnological applications.
Sequences of the COI gene (used to differentiate species) deposited in public databases and used as a reference in this study point to the possibility of three other species in the complex. However, the sequenced individuals could not be accessed for morphological studies or host plant information.
This work is part of two projects supported by FAPESP: one under the Young Investigators program and the other under the Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration, and Sustainable Use ( BIOTA-FAPESP ).
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In a previous study , Moraes' group described three other moth species of the same genus, which were also named in honor of Orixás: E. oya, E. ewa, and E. oxum are the result of splitting what was previously known as a single species, E. pallidicosta.
These descriptions stem from a 2020 study that found the number of species in the genus Eois had been underestimated and could be up to 176% higher than previously thought.
