Scientific vs. common names

[John Grehan]

Just out of general interest I thought I might add some comments regarding
the status of Vanessa and Cynthia with the possibility that someone might
have further comment on other work.

Craw (1990, New Zealand Journal of Zoology 16) published a phylogeny
in which there is one clade under the genus Bassaris (three NZ species, one
common to New Zealand and Australia, another clade with Vanessa atalanta as
the basal lineage, and a series of other species in Asia and S E Asia comprising
the remainder, and finally Cynthia comprising the reamining allied species as
the outgroup.

Since the above phylogeny is buried within a biogeographic analysis it may
not be known to interested parties, so I thought that it was worth mentioning
here. I don't keep up with nymphalid systematics, so if anyone knows of
other more recent phylogenetic studied dealing with these genera (or subgenera
etc I would be interested to hear.

Sincerely, John Grehan