Cephonodes sanshaensis sp. nov. (Lepidoptera, Sphingidae) from Xisha Islands, Hainan Province, China

A new species, Cephonodes sanshaensis Deng & Huang, sp. nov. is described from Xisha islands near Sansha City, China. Photographs of the adults and their genitalia are provided. The new species is similar to C. hylas (Linnaeus, 1771) and C. picus (Cramer, 1777), but it can be easily distinguished by characters in the male genitalia: the right lobe of the uncus is hook-shaped with distinctly acute apex, the left valva is long and narrow with a truncate apex, and the right valva is broad and knife-shaped. Molecular analysis based on COI barcode sequences is used to infer the phylogenetic position of the new species within the genus Cephonodes. An updated key and checklist to the worldwide species of the genus Cephonodes are also provided.

Sphingidae. From the 19 th to the mid-20 th centuries, more than ten new Cephonodes species were described but no additional species were found during the next 50 years, until 2002 when a new species, C. santome Pierre, 2002, was described from São Tomé Island. At present, 20 Cephonodes species are known worldwide, mainly distributed in the Ethiopian, Oriental, and Australian regions (Younus and Kamaluddin 2014; Kitching et al. 2018;Maxwell et al. 2020). Until now, only one species, C. hylas, a widespread Asian species, has been recorded in China, known for its important role as economic pest of coffee (Okelana and Odebiyi 2007). In addition, most larvae of Cephonodes species feed on Rubiaceae plants, including Coffea spp., Canthium spp., Gardenia spp., Morinda spp., Antirhea spp., and some other plant families such as Fabaceae, Moracea, Oleaceae, and Sapindaceae (Bell and Scott 1937;Dupont and Roepke 1941;Barnett et al. 1999;Martiré and Rochat, 2008;Ghorpadé et al. 2013;Atherton et al. 2014;Moulds et al. 2020).
In the present paper, we describe and illustrate another species, Cephonodes sanshaensis sp. nov. from Xisha islands, Hainan Province, China. We provide the adult morphological structures and discuss its phylogenetic position based on COI barcode sequences.

Materials and methods
All the specimens were collected on 26 June 2021 from Jinqin Island, Xisha islands, Sansha City, Hainan Province. The habitat photographs were taken with a Nikon D610 camera. The photographs of adults were taken with a Nikon D610 camera with a Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED. Genitalia were dissected and examined following the methods of Liao et al. (2020). All studied materials were deposited in Hunan Agricultural University, China (HUNAU).
The DNA was extracted from legs of dry adult specimens following the methods of Liao et al. (2019), and the sequences of the cytochrome c oxidase I gene (COI) barcoding fragment (658 bp) was amplified via PCR (Hebert et al. 2004). The PCR products were recovered and cloned, and the positive plasmids were sequenced by Qingke Biotech Co. Ltd (Changsha, China). The COI fragment sequence was uploaded to GenBank with the accession number MZ734621.
For inferring the phylogenetic relationships of the new Cephonodes species, the recorded COI barcode sequences were downloaded from BOLD (Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007) and GenBank (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank), and one sequence was selected when the sequences from the different individuals at one locality were completely consistent. Forty sequences of 12 Cephonodes species/subspecies as ingroups, and two sequences of the family Lasiocampidae, Phyllodesma americana and Eriogaster lanestris, selected as outgroups (Wang et al. 2019) were used to construct the data set. In total, 42 sequences (Table 1) were used in phylogenetic analyses by MEGA X (Kumar et al. 2018) based on the Maximum Likelihood method (Kimura 1980) with General Time Reversible model (GTR) and Gamma distribution. Bootstrap analyses (Felsenstein 1985) were carried out with the same heuristic search setting for 1000 pseudoreplicates. Uncorrected pairwise p-distances amongst the COI sequences between Cephonodes species are provided.

Diagnosis.
This species is similar to other Cephonodes species especially C. picus (Cramer, 1777), but can be distinguished by the following characters: i) the right lobe of the uncus hook-shaped with distinctly acute apex, while in C. picus it is slender and rod-like; ii) the left valva is long and narrow with a truncate apex, whereas in C. picus it is broad and somewhat dilated apically; iii) the costa of the right valva is straight, but in C. picus it is slightly concave.
Forewing upperside with marginal band 2-2.5 mm broad at Rs4, inner edge even between the veins. Upper side of abdomen green with a black and dark red belt; tergite VI with a black median patch, usually mixed with some red scales; the above color pattern forms a funnelshaped stripe. Underside of abdomen white, an oblique black and dark red band on each side of sternites I-IV extended to the end and connected in the center. Upper side of anal tuft yellow-green with black hairs laterally, but underside black with white hairs centrally.
Male genitalia ( Fig. 2A). Uncus quite asymmetrical, slightly tapering to apex, divided into two lobes by a medial groove, the left lobe a little longer than the right; left lobe rectangular, paralleled on each side, apex with two small spines; right lobe strongly developed, forming a long, acute pointed hook; gnathos without processes, represented by a low ridge; valvae asymmetrical, left valva long and narrow, almost paralleled on each side, with a truncate apex; right valva broad knife-shaped, costa straight with an arcuate ventral margin, cucullus blunt; juxta conical. Aedeagus slender, caudal 2/3 well sclerotized and tapering. Female (Fig. 1B). Similar to the male, but slightly larger. Wing expanse 53-58 mm.
Biological notes. The holotype was collected on a leaf of Terminalia sp. on the coast (Fig. 3), and the larvae were found feeding on Guettarda speciosa L. (Rubiaceae).

Etymology.
The new species is named after Xisha islands, Sansha City, the type locality.
picus, and C. xanthus are still vague, and the new species is presently an independent clade compared to the other Cephonodes species (Fig. 4). Cephonodes sanshaensis is closest to C. xanthus, with the genetic distance = 0.024. Host plants: Rubia spp. and Galium spp.
Distribution: Papua New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands.

Discussion
The genus Cephonodes is well known for its transparent wings and stout body, similar to a The minimum genetic distance between the new species and other Cephonodes species is 0.024 (Table S1), which is larger than 0.019 that is the minimum genetic distance among

Conflict of Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.