common names

[Kenelm Philip]

> A change of 1 in 5 in that short period doesn't seem terribly stable.....

	Those who prefer to use common names seem to have a real craving
for stability at all costs. The sad fact is that we are still learning
about butterfly taxonomy--and no nomenclature can remain stable during
taxonomic progress. I am reminded of my favorite quotation from James
Stephens:

"Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There
are lumps in it."

I became interested in butterflies in 1939--and I've seen a lot of lumps
since!

	And it works both ways. Take, for example, _Erebia youngi_. This
species was described in 1900 by Holland--and has remained _E. youngi_
ever since (except for Scott, who lumps it with _E. dabanensis_--an
assignment I strongly disagree with). For most of that time, it had a
perfectly good common name: Young's Alpine. Then NABA, in their infinite
wisdom, decided to change that to Scott's 'Four-dotted Alpine'. That in
itself was a blow to common-name stability--but it gets even better. There
are no fewer than _four_ species of North American _Erebia_ which fit the
designation 'Four-dotted Alpine' (provided you know that the 4 dots occur
on a single forewing, a condition which that name does not itself specify).
Two related species in NE Russia also fit this name, unless you follow
Scott (and NABA) and lump them with the NA species. (By the way, _E.
youngi_ spawned two sibling species (_E. lafontainei_ and _E. occulta_)
recently, both of which had been sitting in museum collections for years
under _E. youngi_.)

	So here's a scientific name which is both more stable, and more
useful, than the current (NABA) common name.

	I have seen NA nomenclature change from Holland (up until the 1950s)
through Klots (1951) and the dos Passos checklist (1964), and then to the
Miller-Brown Catalogue (1981) and its supplement (1989) and then to the
reaction against the splitting in Miller-Brown as shown in Layberry et al
(1998) and Opler (1992 & 1999). I'm sure I will see a few more changes
before I vanish from the scene--but this is nothing to fear. I really hope
people don't want to stop change--that's the one way to be sure you'll
never learn anything...

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu




 
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