Morphological, Ecological, and Molecular Divergence of from (Lepidoptera: Crambidae).

has long been considered as a Pinaceae-feeding type of the yellow peach moth, , in Korea. In this study, the divergence of from the fruit-feeding moth was analyzed in terms of morphology, ecology, and genetics. differs from in several morphological features. Through field observation, we confirmed that pine trees are the host plants for the first generation of larvae, in contrast to fruit-feeding larvae. We successfully reared larvae to adults by providing them pine needles as a diet. From a genetic perspective, the sequences of mitochondrial of these two species substantially diverged by an average of 5.46%; moreover, phylogenetic analysis clearly assigned each species to an independent clade. On the other hand, nuclear showed a lower sequence divergence (2.10%) than . Overall, -based phylogenetic analysis confirmed each species as an independent clade, but a few haplotypes of indicated incomplete lineage sorting between these two species. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that is an independent species according to general taxonomic criteria; however, analysis of the sequence revealed a short divergence time.