Chlosyne vs Charidryas

[Ron Gatrelle]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu>
To: <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: Chlosyne vs Charidryas


 Norbert,
     Both are correct! This depends on the choice of a lumper or a
splitter.
*Melitaea palla* - is traditional and wrong as it mixes tribes.
*Chlosyne palla* - is tribally correct but confusingly conservative.
*Chlosyne (Charidryas) palla* - is correct and of most use for
 communication with dinosaurs.
*Charidryas palla* - is strictly correct.

 Chlosyne janais (Drury, 1782) Butler 1870 - Type Species
Charidryas nycteis (Doubleday & Hewitson, 1847) Scudder, 1871. - Type
Species.
See the series of papers by Higgins in Trans. Roy. Ent. Soc. London.

 ..............Chris Durden

Additional comment by Ron Gatrelle.

When clearing up the long confusion over the name ismeria, I took the
easiest route and used Chlosyne as the genus. I did this as the literature
varied so often on the classification, and I was interested in species
subspecies level taxonomy and left this question to others as the generic
picture with the Melitaeini looked pretty confused. My opinion is that
Charidryas is a very good (distinct) genus and is the best name.

So Charidryas Scudder (1872) would be the genus. Its type species however,
is not a "species," as we now know that nycteis is the northern/inland
subspecies of the fairly rare southeastern US species ismeria (Gatrelle,
1998). So I would say the proper terminology is type taxon not type
species. If anyone is interested in more detail on this taxonomic alignment
you can do one or two things. You can visit the International Lepidoptera
Survey web site at
 www.tils-ttr.org , go to the News section and open the last issue where
the cover article is on ismeria (including the only photos I know of
anywhere of its female). Or you can email me and TILS will send you a free
copy of the actual 1998 research article. Or, you purchase the Vol. one CD
(we are out right now) so get on the waiting list.
RG


> At 07:08 AM 3/22/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>Various literature places some western north american species, eg.
Chlosyne
 >palla, into either the genus Chlosyne or Charidryas.  I would be very
 >interested in any and all views on which version of these genus names is
 >deemed to be most 'correct'. Literature citations or data to support
either
 >view would be welcome but opinions with a rationale would be equally
 >welcome. Thank you.
 >
 >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 >Norbert Kondla  P.Biol., RPBio.
 >Forest Ecosystem Specialist, Ministry of Environment
 >845 Columbia Avenue, Castlegar, British Columbia V1N 1H3
 >Phone 250-365-8610
 >Mailto:Norbert.Kondla at gems3.gov.bc.ca
 >http://www.env.gov.bc.ca
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