Catocala help

[Sphinx14]

Hello!
Can anyone help me ID these Catocala? I have a lot of trouble with these guys. They are all from Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio.

Thank you in advance for your time and help.

Zak

[mothman55]

It's hard to say without knowing the size, and the last 2 are pretty worn. I would say the first one looks to me like piatrix or innubens.

[vabrou]

Upper two appear to be Catocala ilia and lower black hindwing appears to be Catocala agrippina. But that is only a guess, as there are innumerable aberrations in any population, and I have no information as to the species occurring in your area. See my example illustrating three very differently marked specimens of Catocala muliercula from my yard here. I have thousands of jpg of C. ilia variations from just here in my yard. There is no one image representative of any species of insect. Let me further comment about your quest to determine your specimens. All three of these are less than optimal quality, that is obvious. In fact I would have already discarded these when initially captured in the field. That is my personal opinion, not meant to criticise you. What you may not know is that here at my home in SE Louisiana is the location with the highest number of Catocala species for any location in North America, includes Canada, USA and Mexico (ref: Schweitzer, D.F., M.C. Minno, and D.L. Wagner. 2011). How did I accomplish this?
I turned on my hundreds of automatic-capture insect traps 54 years ago, and never ever turned them off. What you may not know is that I have personally discovered about 10-12 new undescribed species of Catocala here in Louisiana. Long ago I described three of them, none since, too many other projects (I have over 400 species of other new undescribed Louisiana lepidoptera). I have captured just here at my home well over 1,000,000--2,000,000 adult wild Catocala using automatic capture fermenting fruit bait traps and automatic capture high wattage UV light traps. I collect all louisiana insects, not just Catocala. Looking at three beat up specimens is of no help to you, but you may want to consider collecting a much larger study sample of better quality specimens. Even if you dissect the genitalia, you would need to have proven genitalia of all similar appearing species occurring in that same geographical area you mention to have a learned opinion. And that requires you collect for years and decades and build up a sizeable reference collection. Apparently these were captured with a hand net, which in order to capture in good condition requires a considerable amount of repetitive practice and a developed handling procedure. I recommend a far superior method to collect them using novel trapping methods that allow for capturing good quality specimens and in greater numbers without you having to spend massive collecting hours in the field. I have been operating such traps 365-366 days and nights since 1969, and my traps are operating at this very moment. On several occasions I have captured in excess of 120,000 Catocala in a single month here at my home, not a single one using a hand net. Let me end by saying, only you are the expert, regardless of how many experts with numerous acronyms behind their names tell you. Also, you don't realize when someone writes a book, that means that is that author's opinion, not necessarily a valid or correct determination. Todays authors are no more correct than the authors of one, two, or three centuries ago. One author of a MONA fascicle has identified 13 different species all as being a single species. And I have worked with three different authors of the still unpublished MONA Catocala fascicle over a half century timewise. There are a number of aberrants of Catocala species which are impossible to determine without dissecting genitalia. DNA also may be of no help whatsoever.