Taxonomic Swap 91531 (Committed on 2021-04-16)

The type of coloro turned out to be a zelicaon, so rudkini is reinstated for this taxon.

Added by nlblock on April 16, 2021 04:03 PM | Committed by nlblock on April 16, 2021
replaced with

Comments

@nlblock I was just wondering what drives these 1 to 1 taxon name changes? I understand if they have to re-split for some reason but didn't understand the reason for 1 to 1 renaming. Thanks. -Chris.

Posted by ezeemonee almost 3 years ago

If coloro is zelicaon, why was it transferred to another polyxenes subspecies?

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

As I understand it, these bugs still represent a distinct taxon and are not zelicaon. The original type was misidentified, though, invalidating the coloro name for the taxon. coloro becomes a junior synonym of zelicaon, and rudkini is reinstated as the senior name for this taxon. More info here: https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4877.3.3

Posted by nlblock almost 3 years ago

That should not invalidate the name coloro unless there's some rule about not being able to "transfer" the taxon epithet across species.

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

I'm not sure if I follow. In this case, the swap was made because the taxon had a name that turned out to be incorrect. The name coloro is now a junior synonym of a different species, but that doesn't affect this taxon being an actual entity that is a subspecies of polyxenes. Sorry if I'm not understanding!

Posted by nlblock almost 3 years ago

I'm not understanding why this subspecies was described under polyxenes, apparently "found" to be a zelicaon, synonymized, but then revived again under polyxenes under an alternative name.
Why isn't it just still polyxenes coloro?

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

My best guess if I'm gathering correctly is:
-the type described as coloro was not coloro, but zelicaon.
-the actual butterfly that apparently was meant to be coloro(?) was collected as a new series of type specimens and named rudkini.

But this assumes that somehow the authors mistook the type specimens and mixed them up somehow...? That seems unusual.

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

With the caveat that this comes almost entirely from just looking at the paper above earlier today, this is how I understand it:
coloro was actually originally described as a "variety" of zelicaon by Wright in 1905, not polyxenes. But Ferris & Emmel (1982) said that Wright's type specimen of coloro was the same thing as what was being called rudkini at the time, so the name rudkini got sunk as a junior synonym of coloro. And that was the state of things until last year's paper linked above. Shiraiwa & Grishin were basically fixing the mistake made by Ferris & Emmel by showing that Wright's coloro should never have been associated with polyxenes.

Posted by nlblock almost 3 years ago

(Sorry, my response was typed entirely before I saw your most recent comment.)

Posted by nlblock almost 3 years ago

Wow, sounds complicated. lol

So if I understand correctly, for the previously labeled P. Polyxenes Coloro, who's caterpillars utilize Turpentine Broom as the main host plant, those are now P. Polyxenes Rudkini.

P. Zelicaon and P. Coloro and are now synonyms for Anise Swallowtail that mainly utilize carrot family and fennel as host plants.

Posted by ezeemonee almost 3 years ago

Ah, so both coloro and rudkini (note lower case spelling, for species and subtaxa names) "existed" at one point. But I have never heard of rudkini, so if both were still considered valid, I was unaware.

I assume this meant that if you took "coloro" specimens and matched them to descriptions, or keyed them out, they would have fit rudkini instead...since coloro was = zelicaon. That means everyone who has been calling these coloro just assumed the ID and never compared to literature. No one noticed that coloro populations weren't matching the described features of that taxon? So many unusual circumstances here.

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

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