Florida records

[John Calhoun]

I wanted to follow-up on my short note about the occurrence of E. martialis in Florida that was published in the current News of the Lepid. Soc.  Additional information may help alleviate lingering confusion of why I considered E. martialis to be "unconfirmed" in Florida. I think I conducted a fair amount of due diligence in my research and certainly never intended to ignore anyone's records.             

1. During the prior discussion about this species on this listserver, there was some question about the source of the Escambia County, Florida record that appeared in Opler (1995) and the USGS/NPWRC Butterflies of North America web site, for which Paul Opler is the senior coordinator. Some years ago, I obtained from Paul copies of his data charts that he used to create his range maps.  At least on the chart that I have, the Escambia Co. record was credited to "Kimball, Lepid. of Florida" [Kimball (1965)].  The records of this species in Kimball are questionable without surviving specimens (the potential for misidentification is too great), but Ron has now confirmed its occurrence in Escambia County. If Paul later verified his Escambia record based on Ron's data, I was unaware of it.    

2. I have copies of all the Lepidopterists' Society Season Summary reports from 1947 to the present. The Summaries for 1968-1970 (published 1969-1971) do not contain any reports of E. martialis in Florida. Although the 1969 report has a number of species listed from Ron, the 1968 report did not include any reports from Ron at all. As Ron pointed out, the 1970 report completely lacked a Florida report.  

3. I received no response to my listing of this species as "questionable" in my 1997 updated list of Florida butterflies published in the journal Holarctic Lepidoptera.  


Thanks everyone for your patience and I apologize for the length of this message, as well as any data or specimens I may inadvertently overlook in my future research projects. I do appreciate it when these oversights are brought to my attention.   

John Calhoun          


 
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