Book Review, of Systematics of Western North American Butterflies
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(NEW Dec. 3, PAPILIO SERIES) ~19 2008 CORRECTIONS/REVIEWS OF 58 NORTH AMERICAN BUTTERFLY BOOKS Dr. James A. Scott, 60 Estes Street, Lakewood, Colorado 80226-1254 Abstract. Corrections are given for 58 North American butterfly books. Most of these books are recent. Misidentified figures mostly of adults, erroneous hostplants, and other mistakes are corrected in each book. Suggestions are made to improve future butterfly books. Identifications of figured specimens in Holland's 1931 & 1898 Butterfly Book & 1915 Butterfly Guide are corrected, and their type status clarified, and corrections are made to F. M. Brown's series of papers on Edwards; types (many figured by Holland), because some of Holland's 75 lectotype designations override lectotype specimens that were designated later, and several dozen Holland lectotype designations are added to the J. Pelham Catalogue. Type locality designations are corrected/defined here (some made by Brown, most by others), for numerous names: aenus, artonis, balder, bremnerii, brettoides, brucei (Oeneis), caespitatis, cahmus, callina, carus, colon, colorado, coolinensis, comus, conquista, dacotah, damei, dumeti, edwardsii (Oarisma), elada, epixanthe, eunus, fulvia, furcae, garita, hermodur, kootenai, lagus, mejicanus, mormo, mormonia, nilus, nympha, oreas, oslari, philetas, phylace, pratincola, rhena, saga, scudderi, simius, taxiles, uhleri. Five first reviser actions are made (albihalos=austinorum, davenporti=pratti, latalinea=subaridum, maritima=texana [Cercyonis], ricei=calneva). The name c-argenteum is designated nomen oblitum, faunus a nomen protectum. Three taxa are demonstrated to be invalid nomina nuda (blackmorei, sulfuris, svilhae), and another nomen nudum ( damei) is added to catalogues as a "schizophrenic taxon" in order to preserve stability. Problems caused by old scientific names and the time wasted on them are discussed. Introduction Many boo~s have been published on butterflies. Unfortunately, most of the authors of those books do not get experts to review their work before they publish it, so mistakes go uncorrected. Other mistakes inevitably appear because of production errors, the advance of knowledge, simple lapses, inaccessibility or absence of experts, and every other conceivable reason. Some mistakes were published long ago and were never corrected, and were later repeated in nearly every book, because authors tend to repeat what prior books wrote, even if it was wrong. Many old erroneous hostplants have been repeated endlessly for 100 or even 200 years. And certain charismatic theories spring up, and are repeated endlessly, even if they are wrong (such as eastern N.A. Lycaena phlaeas being an introduction from Europe, or Hesperia juba adults overwintering). This work examines butterfly books that are popular or recently published, and reviews them, and especially attempts to correct mistakes, in particular misdeterminations of illustrations of butterflies, and errors in their hostplants, behavior, distribution, etc. Sometimes I suggest names of species and subspecies that I believe to be correct instead of the ones used. Subspecies names are sometimes difficult to apply, and for some subspecies I have examined few--sometimes zero- examples, so that some of my opinions here are subjective and may change. Progress marches on, and the names of many of our butterflies will change because of new research, and because of the relentless historical trend of splitting of genera and subspecies and even species. But I do my best here to review these books and correct errors, to aid those butterfly fanciers who want to know the truth and are trying to find it. I did not have the time to find all the mistakes in these books, so I undoubtedly missed very many or even most of them. I tried hardest to check the identification of illustrated butterflies, and hostplants. I seldom read verbal descriptions of adults or verbal descriptions of ranges. I haven't reviewed most of the "Butterfly Watching" books, which have exploded in number lately. Those books have very little new information of use to scientist-lepidopterists, as most "butterfly watchers" do not get new hostplants or discover and report new scientific information in a usable manner, because their hands-off ideology causes uncertainty of identification, and they mostly lack the desire to contribute scientific discoveries. Some of the major watcher books are reviewed though. · A Study in Lectotypes: 1) THE BUTTERFLY BOOK. W. J. HOLLAND. Revised Edition, 1931. Doubleday & Co., NY. 424 p., 77 pl. 2) THE BUTTERFLY BOOK. W. J. HOLLAND. 1898. Doubleday & McClure Co., NY. 382 p., 48 pl. 3) THE BUTTERFLY GUIDE. W. J. HOLLAND. 1915. Doubleday, Page & Co., N.Y. 237 p. Correct Identifications of Specimens on Plates and Determination of Type Status of Illustrated Specimens in all Three Books. The Butterfly Book, by W. J. Holland, was an important book for most of the 1900s. It was first published in 1898, and was completely revised with 29 new plates in 1931. Page ix claims that over 65,000 copies were sold between those dates!, an incredible amount if true. It continued to sell into the 1960s, an amazing longevity for butterfly books. This longevity was evidently due to the color plates which illustrated numerous butterflies in pleasing fashion, and the lack of competing books, because the text contained very little information and was replete with errors and speculations. The best thing about the book is the little stories Holland wrote scattered through the text (listed as “Digression and Quotations” on p. xii), which are fascinating and often humorous (see p. 113, etc.--I think Holland had greater talent as a fiction writer than as a scientist.) However, the 1931 plates are important from a historical perspective, because many of the illustrations are of type specimens named by Henry Skinner, Herman Strecker, Holland, etc., and especially including type specimens of butterflies named by William Henry Edwards in the Carnegie Museum, and from other museums. Holland paid for the publication of vol. 3 of Edwards’ Butterflies of North America, in exchange for Edwards’ collection. Holland then stored the collection in his home cellar--where many specimens molded--and eventually deposited it in the Carnegie Museum, where Holland was the Director. This section attempts to correct the identifications of all the specimens on the plates, and properly determine their type status (as holotype, lectotype, paralectotype, paratype, syntype, not a syntype, etc.). Often I was aided by clues provided by F. Martin Brown in his series of papers on William Henry Edwards’ types (in Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. vols. 90-113, from 1964 to 1987). Brown studied Edwards’ specimens, which are mostly in the Carnegie Museum after being purchased by Holland, so many of those Edwards specimens were used by Holland for the plates in his three books. Lionel Paul Grey corrected the Argynnis (Speyeria) identifications for me in the early 1960s. In some cases, an examination of the actual specimen would be necessary to be certain of the identification (in some of the Erynnis, an examination of the genitalia would be necessary), but I have done my best to identify them, and have given Holland the benefit of the doubt in those cases in which the specimen could be either the species Holland thought it was or another very similar species. This project was undertaken along with a study of Brown’s papers concerning the types of butterflies named by William Henry Edwards (papers published in the Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. from vol. 90 to 113)(some of the later papers were coauthored by Lee D. Miller and a few parts were authored by John C. Downey and Paul A. Opler & W. Reinthal). I found some errors and corrections in Brown’s papers, including about a dozen corrections of type localities, which are listed below after the corrections of Holland’s plates. In identifying these specimens and redoing the plate legends, we encounter a big problem: the “types”. Many specimens in the plates were called “types” by Holland in the text or plate legends of his book, and many of those “types” are actually not types, and thus were called “pseudotypes” by Brown (here I call them “not syntypes”, because the word “pseudotype” is not used in the ICZN Code). This is rather technical. According to the Code, a “syntype” is a member of a type series only if a holotype was not designated [if a holotype was designated, then the other specimens should be called paratypes, not syntypes], and when a lectotype is designated from a syntype then the other syntypes become paralectotypes and can no longer be called syntypes. Thus my use of the word “syntype” here is sometimes a bit loose, as many of the specimens I have called syntypes are now properly called paralectotypes, although they may have been syntypes back in 1931 before a lectotype was designated. If a specimen was called a paratype, and a lectotype has been designated, I changed the wording to paralectotype. (I note that most lepidopterists still do not use the word paralectotype.) But other specimens are called paratypes, even though the Miller/Brown checklist states that only syntypes (and not a holotype) exist, which would mean that those “paratypes” are properly called syntypes, but I left those as “paratypes” while indicating that they may be syntypes due to the lack of a holotype; I worded them that way because of the uncertainty that many of those might not actually have been part of the original type series and thus may not be real syntypes or paratypes, and changing the word from paratype to syntype would imply a level of certainty that does not exist. This problem among Edwards’ specimens and names—“types” that are really not types--arose because Edwards labeled his specimens poorly. He failed to place data labels on individual specimens, and instead merely placed a label at the head of a series of pinned specimens in a drawer.