Cisthene. This
happens when we can't automatically assign an identification to one of the
output taxa.
Review identifications of Cisthene tenuifascia 217048
Taxonomic Split 137585
(Committed on 2024-01-27)
|
|
split into |
|
Comments
Thanks for that effort, Timothy. I'll have a few comments on the atlases below, but basically, I'm not sure how a taxon split and atlasing interact. If the atlasing automatically pulls all observations within a given region (state) to the atlased species, then there will be several issues arising from your atlasing. If you haven't already, see my general notes on the geographical ranges of these two species in this recent journal article:
https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/87775-schwarz-s-lichen-moth-elevated-to-species-status
-- Both species apparently occur in New Mexico, so that state should be added to the atlas for schwarziorum. The records might be separated and atlased on a county-by-county basis, but I don't have the time to do that at present.
-- Tenuifascia has not been documented in Utah, so please remove Utah from the atlas for this species.
-- The single record of Schwarz's Lichen Moth in Utah is a Paul Dennehy specimen about which both Paul and I are ambivalent. Knowlton (1967) cites no records of either species for Utah in the material that he examined, Paul's specimen would be a first state record, whichever species it is. It needs to be dissected and even then, I'm not sure it could be placed to species.
The distributions of these species haven't been worked out in detail in Mexico and it gets complicated quickly with the present of other Neotropical species. I would limit the atlasing of Mexican states for these two species as follows:
-- Tenuifascia is well-documented in northeast Mexico in the following states: Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi. Any other Mexican states should be removed from the atlas for tenuifascia at this time.
-- Schwarziorum is well-documented in northwest Mexico in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa. For the time being, all other Mexican states should be removed from the atlas for schwarziorum. I'm not saying it may not occur further south or east; it just hasn't been studied sufficiently.
Hope this helps.
@gcwarbler Thanks for the range details. I've updated the atlases based on them, including adding different portions of New Mexico to them and leaving more Mexican states out of both atlases. Would you take another look and see if they are now correct?
When I commit the taxon split, any records that fall in the range of both or neither of atlases will have current species-rank C. tenuifascia IDs upranked to Genus Cithene, and those falling in one range but not the other will be updated as needed to become the in-range species. Subspecies-rank IDs will be upranked to the corresponding species regardless of range, accomplished by two other taxon changes I drafted.
The revised atlases are as good as we can make them at present. This will apparently leave numbers of (species level) "Cisthene tenuifascia" in central and southwestern Mexico out of the split, and as I understand it, those will go to genus level. Some number of southern Mexican records of subspecies "schwarziorum" currently at subspecies level under tenuifascia, even outside of the atlased area for schwarziorum, will be upgraded to species level. Have I got that right?
"This will apparently leave numbers of (species level) "Cisthene tenuifascia" in central and southwestern Mexico out of the split, and as I understand it, those will go to genus level."
Yes. And then those Cisthene sp. can be manually reidentified to a species if they are determinable so.
"Some number of southern Mexican records of subspecies "schwarziorum" currently at subspecies level under tenuifascia, even outside of the atlased area for schwarziorum, will be upgraded to species level."
Yes, and these will all go to C. schwarziorum.
@neoarctia @gcwarbler @hughmcguinness I drafted state-level atlases for Cisthene tenuifascia and C. schwarziorum so that many species-rank IDs can be automatically updated by range when this taxon split is committed later, reducing the need for manual reidentifications. Do you know the ranges better and could scrutinize and refine the atlases (green "Atlased" links above)?