That's some serious intellectual fire-power supporting the site. They link freely to the UMich project, but with better pictures. Very cool!

Warning: pages load slowly.

Jeff

Yay! It's always nice having another site to refer to... :)

Note those taxonomic name references...

Jeff, I was perusing the UM website the other day and noticed that the old photos had been replaced with newer, much clearer images. If you click on "distribution" while in the list of butterflies, it takes you directly to that website for photos, distribution data, and info on host plants, etc. I clicked on the red-banded hairstreak just to check it out. Doesn't appear to include OKC in the distribution range. However, I get tons of these hairstreaks every year. I've had them in my yard since early April.

I think the website could do with some updates on the distribution range of some of the butterflies, as well as host plant information. Some of the butterflies listed on that database don't contain any info on host plants at all. But again, I realize this is a monumental project.

But, it is a great resource if you want to find what a particular butterfly's range "may" be, and other info.

Susan

So what's the difference between Papilio polyxenes and Papilio polyxenes asterius?
-Jmcat

jmcat -

Pretty simple really once you begin to understand taxonomic nomenclature, genetics and natural evolution.

Papilio polyxenes polyxenes is the nominate form... and Papilio polyxenes asterius is one of it's named subspecies. So some confusion is common when listings lump any bug into a generalized species name like this by not including the next subordinate level of classification if they are assigned - subspecies.

Subspecies are named usually because they differ from the nominate form for any of several possible reasons (environment/habitat, isolation, distribution, etc) to where they have evolved into a slightly different bug than the nominate form. In this case the range of the nominate form is Cuba, and except for possible strays it probably doesn't intergrade naturally with the subspecies of it found in their own ranges outside of Cuba, while the subspecies who do have over-lapping ranges probably do intergrade naturally. Hmmm, maybe in better laymanÂs terms, the P. p. polyxenes nominate form is mostly isolated in Cuba. So the named subspecies of it are probably the result of strays of the nominate species that established new colonies outside Cuba or a result of ancestral land mass separations that isolated them from each other. Kind of a reverse isolation I guess in that those colonies not continually strengthened by the nominate form gene pool have evolved into subspecies that differ from the nominate species.

Probably as clear as mud, but hopefully at least starts to answer your question.

L.

So is Papilio polyxenes a "legal" term to use for referring to a specific species?
-Jmcat