identification tip

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

I can recall at least 3 North American butterfly books of the past 25 or so
years that have made the wrong statement that Boloria selene is the only
North American Boloria with silver spots on the ventral hind wing. I point
this error out because it keeps coming up in books and it could cause some
newcomers to the field of butterfly study to misidentify Boloria 'eunomia'
dawsoni as B. selene. Of course I only use the name selene in the sense that
it has been used for some years on this continent; not because there is any
substantial reason for calling our butterflies selene.  Efforts to track
down the culprit for changing our North American species Boloria myrina to
selene have taken me to an old paper by A. Clark wherein the only evidence
he gave for his interpretation is that he could not see any differences in
appearance.  Had he not made the mistake of also mentioning in the same
paper that he thought Fabriciana aglaja and Speyeria mormonia (washingtonia
- I think ?) were the same holarctic species; I might have been inclined to
give at least a little credence to his taxonomic interpretation viz. myrina
and selene :-) I would welcome any information that supports the Clark
interpretation that has been in vogue the past many years
PS. - not using common names is my way of encouraging use of real butterfly
names (just kidding, I am too lazy to look up the vernacular English names
which will not mean much to many people anyway)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Norbert Kondla  P.Biol., RPBio.
Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management
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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