Flagger Content Author Content Reason Flag Created Resolved by Resolution
jwidness Dark Green Fritillary (Argynnis aglaja)

should probably be moved to Speyeria

Jul. 25, 2020 19:59:54 +0000 jwidness

moved

Comments

Someone pulled in a bunch of subspecies via the external name provider under the name Speyeria aglaia.

The epithet was originally spelled aglaja by Linnaeus, and as far as I can tell, the spelling aglaia was a mistake in a pirated copy of Linnaeus' 10th edition: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/44468#page/19/mode/1up

The genus name is also controversial, but two recent papers argue for inclusion in Speyeria rather than Argynnis.

de Moya et al. 2017: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/syen.12236
Wiemers el al. 2020: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Martin_Wiemers/publication/341914781_A_complete_time-calibrated_multi-gene_phylogeny_of_the_European_butterflies/links/5ed9664c92851c9c5e815b45/A-complete-time-calibrated-multi-gene-phylogeny-of-the-European-butterflies.pdf

The ungrafted Speyeria aglaia subspecies came from EOL, which cites COL and LepIndex for the name. COL also has it as Speyeria aglaia, citing LepIndex.
But LepIndex has it as Speyeria aglaja: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/detail/?taxonno=156323

So I don't see any convincing reason it should stay in Argynnis, nor for spelling it aglaia rather than aglaja.

Can we move this to Speyeria and then bring in those ungrafted names under Speyeria aglaja?

@sea-kangaroo it says you put Speyeria as a synonym back in the day, I don't know if you have any thoughts
@kharkovbut @leo_dapporto @chrisvanswaay @amzamz

Posted by jwidness almost 4 years ago

I don't have any particular butterfly opinions, I probably was just cleaning up ungrafteds and saw it listed as a synonym either in a field guide or EOL/bugguide/whatever.

Posted by sea-kangaroo almost 4 years ago

Wiemers etal (in https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/28712/) write on this:
"In addition, four species formerly placed in the genus Argynnis were transferred into the genera Fabriciana and Speyeria, based on the study by De Moya et al. (2017). The former genus name had already been used previously for the same species, whereas the latter seems new to European lepidopterists, but is commonly used in North America. Although it could be argued that the change was avoidable by keeping a larger genus Argynnis, a solution originally also favoured by Simonsen et al. (2006), this would have meant to rename a large number of North American butterflies currently placed in the genus Speyeria, and was rejected by North American lepidopterists. Therefore, the recommended changes appear to cause the least changes on a global level and will hopefully contribute to a more consistent taxonomy of Holarctic Argynnini."
So I am in favor of a change to Speyeria aglaja.

Posted by chrisvanswaay almost 4 years ago

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