Classic Speculation

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

I was frankly horrified when a couple of recent North American books dredged
up, from the antiquated and baseless taxonomy sewer, the notion of
Coenonympha tullia over much of the continent. Now that the BC book is out
and it has partially corrected this situation; I am able to share the
following snippet from a paper I am working on.  To make sense of the
acronyms; AB refers to the book Alberta Butterflies, BC refers to the book
Butterflies of British Columbia and BCAN refers to the book Butterflies of
Canada. The following is copied and pasted from a Microsoft Word file so
apologies to anyone who gets computer gobbledeegook due to technical
incompatibilities. Here goes:
Coenonympha inornata Inornate Ringlet
Coenonympha ochracea Ochreous Ringlet

We used this taxonomic arrangement in AB for the simple reason that it was
consistent with the published list of the day and there was no published or
unpublished evidence to support a different arrangement.  There still is no
evidence to support a different arrangement.  North American ringlet
taxonomy was destabilized by BCAN and Opler (1999) through their assignment
of western Canadian populations to the European species tullia.  There has
never been any evidence to support such speculative taxonomy.  Kondla (1999)
provides the following insight to this interesting affair: "There appears to
be no evidence to support the notion that C. tullia is present throughout
the entire range of ringlets in North America.  A paper by Davenport (1941)
is sometimes cited as evidence (most recently by Webster 1998) that we
should call all our North American material tullia but this evidence seems
to consist of a casual statement that the populations on the opposite sides
of the Bering Strait "are hardly to be considered distinct".  It is
noteworthy that Davenport plainly states "... I have purposely neglected to
separate the Coenonympha of the New World from those of the Old...".  In
fact, nothing has ever been published to connect these far northwestern
populations with taxa such as inornata or ampelos.  In the case of southern
BC, Porter and Geiger (1988) provide compelling evidence that the butterfly
previously treated as the species ampelos is in fact correctly placed as a
subspecies of C. california."
More recently BC provides positive evidence that Alberta ringlets are
clearly not tullia but I do not agree with the BC interpretation that
Alberta populations of ssp benjamini are conspecific with C. california.
The reason is simple; there is no evidence to support such an assumption
just as there was never any evidence to support the assumption that North
American ringlets are all one species.  BC places benjamini with california
"for lack of evidence to the contrary".  I prefer to continue to place
benjamini with inornata for exactly the same reason; for lack of evidence to
the contrary.  
What then should we do with the taxon C. ochracea mackenziei?  I do not
personally believe that mackenziei is a ssp of ochracea.  But there is no
evidence to support an alternate interpretation at this time so I think it
is best, from the perspective of name stability, to leave the Alberta
ringlets alone and as presented in AB until someone can produce evidence to
support a different taxonomy.
-- of course I cheerfully stand to be corrected if there is someone out
there sitting on some evidence or if I have missed some evidence in a moldy
old paper :-)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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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