|
|
Post by jonesy610 on Oct 13, 2016 16:56:30 GMT
I have been going through attempting to reorganize and properly label the butterflies in my leptocircini collection according to the most modern taxonomic grouping and am coming up against a wall. Is neographium a genus or subgenus, is agesilaus a protographium or neographium or eurytides. Does anyone know where species are currently, it seems an absolute mess!
|
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on Oct 13, 2016 18:43:23 GMT
Ah, if you wait a year or two we will hopefully be able to answer your questions about Leptocircini as we are starting a major study of the tribe across the world. Unfortunately it will not be possible to share results here until the paper is published, as I am sure you can understand.
In my opinion, at least at the moment it is best to treat all 'American' (North and South) Leptocircini as belonging to genus Eurytides, with various other names at subgenus level.
Adam.
|
|
|
|
Post by jonesy610 on Oct 13, 2016 18:45:45 GMT
I will go with that then, thank you! So are you then saying that you currently treat mimoides, protesilaus, etc as subgenus to eurytides, or were you speaking specifically to neographium?
|
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on Oct 13, 2016 21:58:26 GMT
I am indeed saying that all of these names should best be treated as subgenera (or in some cases probably just synonyms) of Eurytides, except for Protographium which should be limited to the Australian species P. leosthenes as proposed by Munroe (1961) when naming the genus.
Adam.
|
|
|
|
Post by jonesy610 on Oct 14, 2016 2:01:11 GMT
Goodness, every time I try to get into intensively labeling my specimens I come up against this. Several sites I have used have multiple species listed as protographium which I have been following as such, good to know that is defunct for all of them since P. leosthenes is not one of them! Thank you again Adam for your wealth of knowledge.
|
|
|
|
Post by Paul K on Oct 14, 2016 6:59:39 GMT
I also don't understand and accept new name Pterourus which replaced Papilio for almost all N.American species except machaon group in some publications.
I am not taxonomist but Pterourus sounds to me much like a dinosaur species rather than delicate, beautiful Papilio butterfly.
I am also not specialist of Papilionidae but I don't see a reason to split them.
Paul
|
|
|
|
Post by Adam Cotton on Oct 14, 2016 19:02:32 GMT
I also don't understand and accept new name Pterourus which replaced Papilio for almost all N.American species except machaon group in some publications. I am not taxonomist but Pterourus sounds to me much like a dinosaur species rather than delicate, beautiful Papilio butterfly. I am also not specialist of Papilionidae but I don't see a reason to split them. Paul Scopoli, 1777 (type species Papilio troilus Linnaeus, 1758) is the oldest available genus group name for the American species related to Papilio glaucus, whereas the group containing Papilio cresphontes and allies is often known by genus name Heraclides Hübner, 1819 (type species Papilio thoas Linnaeus, 1771). As I have mentioned before, in reality splitting or lumping genus names is really subjective (ie. up to you whether you agree or not), and as long as all the species placed in the genus are a monophyletic group (all descended from a single common ancestor) and no members of the same monophyletic group are placed elsewhere then your treatment is not 'wrong'. After all, genus names are really a human invention to try to reflect the relationships between species which are the natural 'units'. The major problem with splitting genera too much is that non-experts lose important information about the relationships between species. For example ecologists (who are some of the 'end-users' of the names provided by taxonomists) not familiar with Papilionidae would probably not realise that Pterourus glaucus is quite closely related to Heraclides cresphontes just by looking at the names. That is why I currently prefer to treat these as at best subgenera of Papilio. Papilio split into two main branches between 65 and 35 million years ago, one mainly containing American species (plus ' Chilasa', ' Agehana' and alexanor) and the other branch containing all the remaining Asian, Australian and African Papilio species, with the machaon group (part of the second branch) present in both hemispheres. I prefer to treat both main branches with all the species as belonging to genus Papilio, as in reality they are all closely related compared to species of other genera within Papilionidae. Adam. |
|
