What's in a name: Red-spotted Purple/White Admiral and their kin

Barb Beck barb at birdnut.obtuse.com
Sat Apr 27 21:56:35 EDT 2002



Michael,

The bottom line is that the NABA list does not work for amateurs in this
part of the country.  Because they lump many of our species and do not
recognize subspecies in their database they lost lot of our data.  Lumped
data where species overlap cannot be retrieved.

They declared that Hinton Alberta found the first records of the Christina
Sulphur for the counts.  This is absolutely false - I have been turning in
the Christina under their stupidly lumped name with the proper "subspecies"
designation for years.  All of that is lost on them

The names are put together apparently by a group of people from the NE who
have very little appreciation of what is west of the middle of the
continent.  They do not even have a taxonomist on the naming committee.  It
is a fiasco.

We want to properly be able to keep track of the butterflies we identify.
We cannot do that with their current list.  It might work well for the Mass
Leps group but does not for us.

I am NOT a professional - I am a chemist by training who got into computing
science for a while.  I am strictly an amateur and a novice at butterflies
at that.

I am not happy calling every Azure in this province a Spring Azure any more
than I would be calling every Epidonax Flycatcher in the province a Least
Flycatcher!  (We have Hammonds, Dusky, Least, Yellow-bellied, Western
(Pacific Slope and Cordilleran).  At certain times we cannot definitely id
them then they go down as Epidonax FC.  The Pacific Slope and Cordilleran
integrate in the province and so if their voice is intermediate it goes down
as a Western.  No big deal.  We id to the limits of our ability.

The Boreal Spring Azure, Western Spring Azure and Summer Azure that we have
in the province are not that big of an id problem to separate.  We do not
even have what you guys call a Spring Azure here!!

We have the NABA lumping data for the Northwestern and Atlantis Fritillaries
(even though they admit they are distinct species!!!! - read their
justification) losing any of our historical range information because the
ranges overlap significantly.

Beginning bird books do not use such a dumbed down approach to birds as
Glassberg does to butterflies.

It is high time that some people in the Eastern US learn that there is a
little more to North America than simply the New England States.

I bust my butt to get count information in from this area so we have a
recored of what we have.  We have NOTHING from the area of California I was
raised in and I realize that what I saw there as a kid is lost forever.  If
the NABA wants to just have butterfly outings or nature walks where things
are not properly identified or recorded why the heqq do they present the
stuff as official counts.

Incidentally I am one of the regional co-editors for the NABA region which
covers Alberta.  I KNOW THAT THEIR NAMES DO NOT WORK HERE AND NOBODY IN THAT
ORGANIZATION SEEMS TO GIVE A DAMN!

Barb Beck
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Gochfeld [mailto:gochfeld at eohsi.rutgers.edu]
Sent: April 27, 2002 7:06 PM
To: Barb Beck
Cc: TILS-leps-talk at yahoogroups. com; leps-l at lists.yale.edu
Subject: What's in a name: Red-spotted Purple/White Admiral and their
kin


Dear Barb,

The Northeast is indeed a land of confusion. When I was 11 I first went to
Boy
Scout camp in the Adriondacks, and collected some butterflies. The commonest
(or at least the most conspicuous butterfly) was called the White Admiral by
local naturalists who introduced me to many different aspects of unfamiliar
flora and fauna. .  I was very disturbed to find that my little Golden Guide
referred to it as the Banded Purple, and it took some time (years) to
reconcile
the discrepancy.

White Admiral it has always been, for me, and in our book the species entry
is
given as "Red Spotted Purple and White Admiral" , even though the latter may
not truly occur. .

It would be far better for all of us if these two butterflies would simply
agree not to intergrade and declare that they are separate species after
all.

Although I am not likely to adopt the name Red-spotted Admiral (anymore than
you'll ever hear me say Yellow-rumped Warbler), I don't think that priority
has
any  bearing on English names.  The oldest name is not necessarily going to
prevail.

I do agree that it would be desirable to have a widely available checklist
of
subspecies (if they would just stand still long enough to be documented).
However, the NABA list may pretty well serve its purpose for amateurs.
After
all the AOU Checklist intended MAINLY FOR PROFESSIONALS no longer lists
subspecies and the plan to produce a second volume with subspecies has
apparently been abandoned.

I think that the way out of the bind is to have local groups develop
supplementary checklists of forms of local interest and maintain the data on
them (even if it doesn't get into the Fourth of July Count volumes).  We try
to
do that in NJ with several taxa of interest.

Mike Gochfeld

PS: Which form occurs in Albert and do you by the disruptive vs mimetic
dichotomy.

============================================================================
================

Barb Beck wrote:

> Michael,
>
> L. arthemis is NOT a Red-spotted Purple.
>
> The oldest name for the species is WHITE ADMIRAL that is the the species
L.
> arthemis arthemis.  By the NABA rules of nameing all other butterflies on
> their list you should be referring to Red-spotted Purple as "Red-spotted
> Purple" White Admiral just as we must refer to many of our subspecies and
> some species which the NABA refuses to name.  This would not sit well with
> the Mass and NJ leps people (the naming committee has two people from MASS
> NABA, Glassberg and Swengel- all four from the NE US) so they took the
name
> they wanted.  Guess the rest of North America can handle confusion in the
> names of our butterflies but those in the NE US cannot!
>
> Barb Beck
> Edmonton




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