Flag for Taxon: Tiger Swallowtails and Allies (Subgenus Pterourus)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| salmanabdulali | treichard | Tiger Swallowtails and Allies (Subgenus Pterourus) |
Pterourus has been upgraded to a genus in Pelham's catalog |
Feb. 18, 2020 15:56:32 +0000 | Not Resolved |
Comments
As mentioned elsewhere, these broader disagreements (and therefore about the concept of Ppailio itself) need to be resolved on a global scale, unfortunately. Should just stay with Papilio for the moment.
ok so conclusion is to maintain Pterourus as a subgenus of Papilio as opposed to elevating it to sp. status? - FYI @birdernaturalist
Yes.
While I personally hate changes like this, if it's in the new Pelham list, it will likely get widely adopted in the next few years. I see the question as whether iNat should be an early adopter, or wait for printed field guides to catch up.
I didn't realize I was looking at an older version of https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat.htm. So I guess both https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat.htm AND https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/All.htm now have this as a genus (as opposed to a subgenus).
It would certainly be disruptive to change since this will touch so many observations, but it doesn't seems so controversial now that both lists have it this way
The North Carolina butterfly web site
http://www.dpr.ncparks.gov/nbnc/a/accounts.php
and the Maryland butterfly web site
https://leplog.wordpress.com
have both adopted all the many recent changes in Pelham's catalog, including this one.
The problem here is that while American lepidopterists may be happy to adopt these taxa as genera (as certainly am I), the issue has implications outside of America. Here, if we use Pterourus and Heraclides as genera, then 'Papilio' will be restricted to remaining African and Asian species, which may or may not be monophyletic and therefore form a valid taxon. In fact, they likely will not be monophyletic, meaning inaturalist, as a global resource, would need to recognize Menelaides, Achillides, and likely some other generic names I don't know anything about, which are currently also treated as Papilio, as valid as well. So, really, this is a case where we need to follow a global list for Papilionidae, I think.
Is Papilio currently monophyletic with Pterourus and Heraclides included in it? Pelham is updating so often right now that it's hard to keep track of what is being changed.
Well, I think the current global concept of Papilio includes most (all?) of the Papilionini, and therefore is presumably monophyletic, just as including all Papilionidae in Papilio would be monophyletic. But not very helpful.
According to Wu et al, "Phylogeny and Historical Biogeography of Asian Pterourus Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae): A Case of Intercontinental Dispersal from North America to East Asia"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4617649/
-- Papilio (in the larger sense) is monophyletic
-- Papilio would remain monophyletic without Heraclides
-- Papilio would remain monophyletic if all 3 of Heraclides, Pterourus, and Chilasa were removed
(see figure 2 of the article)
Good stuff! Thanks for the link, @salmanabdulali!
Ah, that's excellent news! Maybe we could indeed consider using Heraclides and Pterourus, and maybe Chilasa...
I noticed that several species in Papilio are not currently place in any subgenus. The following should be added to subgenus Pterourus:
Papilio birchalii
Papilio warscewiczii
Papilio xanthopleura
Butterflies of American has all of these in genus Pterourus.
In addition to the three above, the following two species also need to be moved into Pterourus:
Papilio ascolius
Papilio bachus
Done! Thanks, @salmanabdulali!
I have created a separate flag for the remaining "lost" species in the genus.
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/537379
In case anyone else is wondering about the status of this change, there are more details about the whole Papilio split in the comments about Heraclides: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/477746
@kwillmott giving that BOA has updated and Pterourus is now considered a genus (just like Heraclides) would it be the case to update it here on iNat? I can spearhead the necessary changes (using a taxon split this time to avoid the problems we faced with Heraclides) but I would like to know if other curators agree on this first.
yes that would be great!
I've tried to draf a taxon split but since it involves taxa with more than 75K observations, only staff or taxon curators can do this change. Also, I'm almost 100% sure that Pterourus would not automatically update to genus, so I'll follow @loarie steps mentioned in the Heraclides flag (https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/477746) to create an output of all taxa involved, then the split.
https://butterfliesofamerica.com/US-Can-Cat-1-30-2011.htm has Pterourus as a subgenus of Papilio but https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/All.htm elevates it to genus status. Which should we do there @maractwin @nlblock @birdernaturalist ? also see https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/477746 and https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/409580