Jamides celeno - are we all wrong!

I have noticed that Yutaka has the peninsular subspecies as J. celeno celeno, with type location as Sumatra, whilst the northern Thai ssp. as J. celeno aelianus, type location of India occidentale. Funet, on the other hand has the species holotype as "India", at the same time giving the nominate ssp. as from Sumatra and Taiwan only, and ssp. aelianus from Pulau Mal, Singapore and S. Yunnan, there is no mention of Malaysia or Thailand. I am very confused!!!!

Do we all, including CP4, have our subspecies mixed up? Or is it Yutaka?

Yes, it is quite a mess here.

Cramer in 1775 named the taxon celeno from "India" which at that time includes all the East Indian Islands ie. Sumatra, Java & Borneo.

Fabricius in 1793 named the taxon aelianus as Hesperia aelianus from Pulau Mai (not Mal as in funet) which a search reveals as an island in the Moluccas.( Note the info below is from source not from funet.)
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ja...eleno_aelianus

Later revisors may have narrowed the type locality to Sumatra.
You will notice that The Indian Foundation of Butterflies list only ssp celeno throughout continental India.

To complicate matters, Lepindex list the taxon aelianus as a species of Cupido ( = Everes ).

I am inclined to believe ssp celeno is applicable to all the continental forms.

TL Seow:cheers:

Thanks. I would love to say 'Thanks for clearing this up'..... but I can't.

I am inclined to change my site to simply say Jamides celeno ssp. and give details of the confusion on my details page for that species. I'll have to think this over for a bit!:hmmm:

I thought Pulau Mal was wrong! It just did not sound right for this area.

You can see aelianus is no longer listed as a subspecies of celeno in Lepindex.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curati...6recLimit%3d30

If this is correct it means that taxon aelianus was all along mis- IDed as a subspecies of J. celeno by later revisors.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curati...6recLimit%3d30
As stated in Wilkemedia, the holotype is lost, & what is left is the drawing.
Since Jamides & Cupido (Everes) are quite different on the underside it is hard to see how the misID can occur unless only the upperside was drawn which is quite unlikely.

However, Jamides spp. were first placed under Cupido 1801 before they were transferred to Jamides 1819.
It is possible that Lepindex staff were simply transferring data from old index cards to a computerised system .

TL Seow:cheers:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Psyche

It is possible that Lepindex staff were simply transferring data from old index cards to a computerised system .

TL Seow:cheers:

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In view of the huge volume of work required, I would think this is a distinct probability.