'Anthocharis cethura pima'

[Kenelm Philip]

	The usual place to go when you have questions about the correct
name to apply to a taxon is _not_ a field guide, but a checklist or cata-
logue.

	The following lists agree in calling _Anthocharis pima_ a full
species:

dos Passos, 1964. A Synonymic List of the Nearctic Rhopolocera.
Hodges, 1983. Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico.
Miller/Brown, 1981. A Catalogue/Checklist of the Butterflies of America
  North of Mexico. (Also its supplement: Ferris, 1989)
Cassie et. al., 1995. The NABA Checklist & English Names of North American
  Butterflies.

	The Miller/Brown catalogue was quite controversial in its day. Many
people objected to what they considered an extreme level of splitting. Yet
all of these agree on the status of _A. pima_. Unless you can find a more
recent revision of the genus, I would stick with _pima_ as a species, re-
gardless of what any given field guide might say. (On the other hand, tax-
onomy is not (and probably never will be) totally stable on the species/
subspecies question. People who want every individual specimen to be tagged
with 'its real name' will always run into problems...)

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu

P.S. I am in no sense an expert on this genus. Perhaps someone who is
can shed some light...