Satyrodes appalachia appalachia

[Ron Gatrelle]

Over the years I have often shaken my head at how northern US lepsters have
no idea what Satyrodes appalachia appalachia looks like. To call the
northern pops appalachia rather than leeuwi is absurd. I ran across a good
photo of nominate appalachia at the Georgia Butterfly web site. Here is the
URL
http://www.america.net/~jflynn/butterflies/apbr-20000730-322-23.jpg
This specimen is from north central GA. The TL of appalachia is near
Brevard NC. I have seen many specimens from the general area of the type
locality. The type locality is near the northern range of this subspecies
in the Mtns. Along the eastern coastal plain it extends farther north.

Several years ago at a Southern Lepidopterists meeting in Gainesville Fl. I
just happened to bring along a series of the nominotypical subspecies from
SC, GA, and NC. John Calhoun was at this meeting having recently moved to
FL from Ohio. John had encounter the "dark" appalachias in Fl and noted how
radically different they were from what he was used in the upper Midwest.
Typical of northern collectors, because he had always considered what was
in his "back yard" as normal appalachia - he thought the FL pop should have
a name. When he saw my series of true appalachia his exact words were
"their the same thing [as the Fla bug]!"

Had northern lepsters bothered to read my 1974 J. of the Lepid. Soc.
original description of leeuwi they would have know that all these southern
pops were the "same thing." The undescribed northern subspecies was
(commonly) right under their noses for decades. Home grown taxonomic
assumption.

It is unfortunate that the excellent pictures taken by my co-author, Dr.
Richard Arbogast, were so poorly reproduced in the Lep. Soc. Journal. I
have these pictures and should go ahead and put them up on the TILS web
site even though they are in black and white.

While I'm at it, let me say something about "expert review". When I
submitted this paper to the Journal the new subspecies was described under
the genus Satyrodes. Who ever the anonymous reviewer was insisted it be
described under Lethe. Some expert. I HAD to agree to a taxonomy I knew to
be stupid to get it published. About the same time I published this paper
dosPassos and a couple of others had realized and published that appalachia
and eurydice were distinct species. I too knew this but they beat me to
publication. What is interesting is that, till the day he died, dosPassos
insisted that fumosa = appalachia. No matter how we argued in our
correspondence I could never get him to see the light. It was also odd that
the two populations I was very familiar with were fumosa (being from Iowa I
had seen hundreds of these) and southern appalachia, which very very few
lepidopterists had ever seen. The two I had never seen in the wild were
leeuwi and eurydice - the two common Northerneastern taxa.

I still occasionally hear of people who think fumosa and eurydice are
distinct. This is ridiculous. Fumosa, like B.selene nebraskensis and E.
bimacula illinois  blend from the prairie pops right into eurydice, selene
and bimacula in eastern Indiana, Ohio. There is a diminutive fumosa like
pop of eurydice in upper peninsula of Mich that I have long thought might
warrant a subspecific name. I was loaned a series of these via Mo Neilson
when Terry and I were preparing the leeuwi paper. By the way, Terry
Arbogast is originally from Illinois - but long time transplanted
southerner - now in Gainesville, FL.

Ron


 
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