NABA Names Committee

[Chris J. Durden]

Oh how confusing a little heavy handed regulation can make things!
Are these names to lithify concepts at present levels of ignorance?
Will these names appear in the Federal Register to become enshrined in law?
What names are to be used in other North American countries such as Canada,
Costa Rica, Jamaica or Haiti? 
Should these other communities not be represented on an official names
committee?
  Let's just produce a lexicon and thesaurus of names that have been used,
with full disclosure of sources.
  Even when old *Dryas iulia* is demonstrated to consist of a complex of
biological cryptic species we can still refer to it as flambeau, julia, or
even as some have around here - orange julius!
  This attempt to impose uniformity on the communities of butterfly
enthusiasts is turning out to be far too divisive.
........Chris

At 10:31  30/03/00 -0500, you wrote:
>The message I posted on March 27, announcing the formation of the NABA 
>Names Committee (it had been formed and working for quite some time) was 
>a message from the entire committee. This current message is from me, 
>Jeffrey Glassberg, and may not represent the full and complete views of 
>some or all other NABA Names Committee members.
>
>In that earlier message, we let you know about the existence of the NABA 
>Names Committee, of its reasons for existence, of its activities and 
>goals, and asked for your help in locating certain publications that we 
>may have overlooked.  Because it was relevant to a history of the NABA 
>Names Committee, we mentioned the existence of an ad hoc committee 
>chaired by Paul Opler that is developing its own nomenclature.  We did 
>not characterize that committee, either as a group or as individuals. 
>
>In a March 28 message to this group, one of the members of the Opler ad 
>hoc committee, Felix Sperling, makes statements regarding the NABA Names 
>Committee that casts both the NABA Names Committee and its individual 
>members in an unfavorable light and that I believe distorts the truth. I 
>would first like to reiterate the history of the NABA Names Committee 
>and the ad hoc committee headed by Paul Opler and to comment on some 
>particular remarks of Felix Sperling.
>
>	1992. NABA is formed
>	1992. NABA forms an English Names Committee
>	1993. NABA publishes first installment of Checklist and English 
>Names of North American Butterflies (hereafter, First Edition).
>	1995. NABA publishes completed First Edition.
>	1995. NABA formally approaches the Lepidopterists’ Society 
>urging it to form a scientific names committee, and saying that only if 
>the Lepidopterists’ Society did not form such a committee then NABA 
>would.
>	1995. Lepidopterists’ Society declines to form a scientific 
>names committee.
>	1996. NABA approaches Robert Robbins of the Smithsonian 
>Institution about forming a NABA Scientific Names Committee. Robert 
>Robbins declines to chair such a committee because of other commitments, 
>but suggests approaching Paul Opler.
>	1997. NABA approaches Paul Opler about chairing a NABA 
>committee. Paul Opler agrees to form a scientific names committee, and 
>at NABA’s suggestion John Burns, Robert Robbins, and Felix Sperling are 
>made part of the committee, along with Don LaFontaine, with whom Paul 
>Opler was already working.
>	1998. Opler committee decides it will be an ad hoc committee, 
>not part of NABA. 
>	1998. Opler ad hoc committee decides that it will use the 
>species’ taxonomies published in Butterflies of Canada and in Peterson 
>Field Guide to Western Butterflies as its starting list.
>	1999. The Opler ad hoc committee proposes a starting list with 
>52 changes (counting, for example, splitting 1 species into 4 as a 
>single change) from the NABA list, in spite of 1) the fact that the 
>status of almost all taxa on the NABA list were decided explicitly 
>because that is the way they were treated in Paul Opler’s 1992 work, 
>Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies and  2) the fact there has 
>been no compelling scientific information published supporting almost 
>any of these proposed changes. 
>	Nov.1999. After verbally communicating to committee members for 
>more than a year that NABA would not adopt such a list and would proceed 
>itself to revise the First Edition, I, solely at the sole of Felix 
>Sperling, and in the interests of the butterflying community, informed 
>the Opler ad hoc committee that I would accept the Opler ad hoc 
>committee’s list, even though I strongly disagreed with most of the 
>changes, if it dropped 11 changes that I believe are the most 
>unwarranted and that also are, and will, cause the most confusion and 
>frustration for butterfliers. 
>	Feb. 2000. Although a majority of its members favored my 
>proposal, in the end the Opler ad hoc committee rejected this proposal 
>and following conversations, the NABA English Names Committee agreed to 
>become the NABA Names Committee, considering all aspects of North 
>American butterfly names.
>
>What should be clear from the above is that NABA has had a longstanding 
>and abiding interest in the names of North American butterflies and 
>requires a committee to decide the names that NABA will use.  As stated 
>in a previous message, NABA needs a consistent set of names for its own 
>use, in the NABA 4th of July Butterfly Counts and in NABA publications. 
>We have waited long enough. Given the above history, NABA will not adopt 
>"en toto" the names proposed by any other group, but will consider all 
>published information regarding any name. 	The NABA Names Committee 
>will change any name, or status of any taxon, for which there is 
>published information that provides a compelling case for change. I 
>think that most people can understand the concept that if an 
>organization has adopted a taxonomic list as the official list of that 
>organization, and if this list has been widely disseminated and relied 
>upon by many individuals and other organizations (as the NABA Checklist 
>has), then the organization would be remiss to change names on  that 
>list without very strong evidence that the original list is in error.  
>Largely because of NABA there are now many thousands of people actively 
>involved with North American butterflies. Changing the names or species 
>status of butterflies on personal whim, or the "recommendation" of a 
>friend, or on the basis of anecdotal information regarding a species’ 
>status, is no longer an acceptable modus operandi. 
>
>Felix Sperling says "the results [of the NABA Names Committee]
 will be 
>congruent with Glassberg’s new book while Opler’s book and the Layberry 
>et.al. book will be out of synch." 
>
>The implied suggestion here seems to be that perhaps I desire this 
>outcome, perhaps for some type of commercial reason or perhaps an ego 
>thing? – nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who would think 
>that the taxonomy used in a butterfly guide offered to the public would 
>have one scintilla of an effect on book sales is living on a different 
>planet. The Audubon Society Field Guide to Butterflies is 20 years out 
>of date, follows Miller-Brown, and thus is completely out of sync with 
>the NABA list, however it is by far the largest selling butterfly guide. 
>As far as ego goes, I think I must be among the first of authors to have 
>chosen not to impose my own views on a species’ status in books that 
>I’ve written. The books have been consistent with the First Edition, 
>i.e., essentially the taxonomy in Paul Opler’s Peterson Field Guide to 
>Eastern Butterflies, even when I personally disagreed with the taxonomy. 
>If the Layberry et.al and Opler books are out of synch with the NABA 
>list, as they are right now, that was the choice of those authors.  
>Prior to the publication Butterflies of Canada and for years prior to 
>the publication of the Peterson Field Guide to Western Butterflies, I 
>strongly and repeatedly urged Don LaFontaine and Paul Opler to use the 
>NABA list in those books.  I pointed out that one could use the NABA 
>Checklist and make perfectly clear that one disagreed with it (as I have 
>done in a number of cases). So, for example, one could illustrate all 
>the subspecies of Anthocharis sara that one believes are really separate 
>species, treat them under the heading Anthocharis sara, and state in the 
>text they are listed as subspecies to be consistent with the NABA 
>Checklist but that one is certain that they are separate species. Thus, 
>in books intended for a mass market, readers (most of whom are 
>beginners) see the same consistent concepts from book to book while the 
>author clearly states his/her own view. In the end, those authors 
>decided not to take this approach.
>	It is very unlikely that my forthcoming Butterflies through 
>Binoculars: The West will be congruent with the Second Edition of the 
>NABA Checklist. The reason for this is that I need to finalize English 
>and scientific names for this book within the next month, and the NABA 
>Names Committee will not be able to consider all the names issues 
>relevant to this book within that time period.  Thus, I will use the 
>NABA First Edition as the basis for my taxonomy, only deviating from it 
>in the few cases where the entire committee is already in complete 
>agreement that a change is warranted. 
>	Felix Sperling says that I announced the formation of my 
>committee the other day. The NABA Names Committee has been in existence 
>for the past five years. He also said "presumably this new group will 
>now accommodate Glassberg’s wishes for a list with fewer changes from 
>the NABA First Edition list" Again, completely contrary to Felix 
>Sperling’s heavy-handed insult to the other members of the NABA Names 
>Committee, the NABA Names Committee consists of five very strong-willed 
>people, all of whom passionately care about butterflies and their names. 
> As it turns out, I believe that it is a fair statement that a number 
>(probably a majority) of the NABA Names Committee members are even more 
>opposed to changing names than I am. While my suggestions are often 
>adopted, as any of you who read the detailed discussions that 
>accompanied the First Edition of the NABA Checklist know, I am often 
>outvoted (I was the 1 in many of those 4-1 votes.).  I don’t ask people 
>to join a committee because they are likely to agree with me!
>
>