P. glaucus and P. canadensis

[Chris J. Durden]

Look for introgression in *P. p. asterius* and *P. brevicauda* in the 
marshes along the St. Lawrence. My clue is in minor variation that I found 
in *asterius* on Ile Perrot QU.
   The Lyman Collection (formerly at Redpath Museum, McGill U., now at 
Macdonald College) had/has? a Labrador specimen that looks like a good 
*brevicauda* X *aliaska* mix!
   Just because species can introgress does not mean that they are not good 
functioning species.
..............Chris Durden

At 07:12 AM 6/7/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Re. the question about P. machaon and P. brevicauda. Yes, apparently some
>people think that these are the same species.  What little I know about this
>one is that the rational for this interpretation is the level of chemical
>similarity in the gene segments that have been sequenced to date. Other
>people of course hold a different view. To me they are such grossly
>different looking insects that I see absolutely no reason to treat them as
>one species.  Using chemical similarity to lump these species is akin to
>using genitalic similarity to to lump different species (eg. boloria
>distincta and B. astarte). I would want to see evidence of a fairly broad
>zone of character intergradation between machaon and brevicauda before
>viewing same species status as a reasonable interpretation. Interestingly,
>another researcher has published his reasons for the interpretation that we
>do not even have P. machaon in North America. A structural difference in the
>egg micropyle was one of the criteria for that interpretation.  There are no
>simple answers to these kind of taxonomic issues of what is a subspecies
>versus a species. different people have different definitions and criteria.
>different people will interpret the same data in different ways.  One can
>chose to simple accept the latest published rationale for a particular
>interpretation or one can chose to examine the available evidence and form
>ones own interpretation. I use the latter approach as much as possible - but
>it is time consuming to use this approach.



 
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