Abstract: 【Aim】 This study aims to explore and recover the tribal phylogenetic relationship within the subfamily Hesperiinae in China. 【Methods】 The partial mitochondrial Cytb and ND1 gene sequences of a total of 32 species in 22 genera were determined and analyzed, and the phylogenetic trees of the Hesperiinae species were constructed using the Bayesian and maximum likelihood methods. 【Results】 There are 450 conservative sites, 386 variable sites and 304 parsimony-informative sites, and a 76.9% A+T bias in the 836 bp nucleotides of the combined sequence of the two mitochondrial genes. Phylogenetic trees based on the combined sequence of Cytb and ND1 genes showed that the Ancistroidini, Baorini and Hesperiini are monophyletic with the relationship of (Hesperiini+(Baorini+Ancistroidini)), while the tribe Aeromachini (=Halpini) is a paraphyletic group. 【Conclusion】 Our results support the tribal nomenclatures of the Ancistroidini, Baorini and Hesperiini. However, the polyphyly of Aeromachini in this study contradicts with the former results by Warren et al. In addition, the phylogenetic relationship of other tribes needs further confirmation by more taxa sampling.

Key words: Lepidoptera, Hesperiinae, Cytb, ND1, phylogeny, China