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Large blue butterflies,  Phengaris (Maculinea ), are an important focus of endangered-species conservation in Eurasia. Later-instar  Phengaris  caterpillars live in  Myrmica  ant nests and exploit the ant colony’s resources, and they are specialized to specific host-ant species. For example, local extinction of  P. arion  in the U. K. is thought to have been due to the replacement of its host-ant species with a less-suitable congener, as a result of changes in habitat. In Japan,  Myrmica kotokui  hosts  P. teleius  and  P. arionides  caterpillars. We recently showed, however, that the morphological species  M. kotokui  actually comprises four genetic clades. Therefore, to determine to which group of ants the hosts of these two Japanese  Phengaris  species belong, we used mitochondrial  COI -barcoding of  M. kotokui  specimens from colonies in the habitats of  P. teleius  and  P. arionides  to identify the ant clade actually parasitized by the caterpillars of each species. We found that these two butterfly species parasitize different ant clades within  M. kotokui.

Host-ant specificity of endangered large blue butterflies (Phengaris spp., Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) in Japan