Catocala 2022

[Trehopr1]

Vernon, can you tell us something about Catocala atocala or Catocala charlotte ? Can you also provide photographs ?

Was wondering if these were species completely "new to science" or if these were in fact named forms of something else such as in the case of ilia/umbrosa (which no one had seriously scrutinized for a great many years).

[vabrou]

Regarding Catocala atocala Brou, bottom image another valid species that all the Catocala 'experts' overlooked, photo illustrates male upper and female lower of C. atocala. 4-5 generations of Catocala experts had an opportunity to solve this matter. I described Catocala atocala in 1985 having collected adults for the previous 15 years. The odd name has no particular connotation, was just looking for a unique species name that would piss off my detractors. Every new species I have described in scientific literature over the past half century has been poo-poo'd by the elitist experts, but in the end not one of my described species has ever subsequently been overturned. I first became aware of the animosity of the elitist entomologist when I claimed to discover dozens of new species of lepidoptera in Louisiana back in the 1970s. And this nastiness came to the forefront when one of the MONA fascicle addressing the saturnidae genus Automeris was published. Subsequently I wrote the author of that fascicle and advised him that I had collected a series of Automeris adults in coastal Louisiana that was not included in his recent publication addressing the genus Automeris in North America. At that time, no one (in the cabal of ruling USA lepidoptera elitist) would accept my determination that this Automeris species was in fact a previously unknown and undescribed valid new species. After all the matter of Automeris were addressed in the recent MONA fascicle by Ferguson. So not taking no for an answer, I got together with the author of that Saturnid fascicle (Douglas Ferguson) and we subsequently co-authored and described Automeris louisiana Ferguson & Brou. See jpg of male and female A. louisiana.

As I stated for Catocala umbrosa, here again for nearly a century no one ever bothered to look at the genitalia of Catocala atocala either. This species was illustrated by Barnes, W. and J. McDunnough. 1918. Illustrations of the North American Species of the Genus Catocala. Mem. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. New Series, 3: part 1, 47 pp., 22 plates, and considered to be a form of Catocala agrippina. There were only a very few known specimens at that time in history. The same species again appeared in Sargent, T.D. 1976, Legion of Night: The underwing moths. Univ. Mass. Press. Amherst. 222 pp., appearing as a mysterious decorative drawing, but not actually included in his treatment of eastern North American Catocala. All along the species was considered a rare form (aberration) of the more abundant Catocala agrippina. In fact these two species can occur together in areas where Pecan trees grow. I have captured both species sitting next to each other on trunks of mature Pecan trees. Most of my specimens of both agrippina and atocala were collected using high-wattage automatic-capture mercury vapor light traps.. It was obvious these C. atocala specimens were not an aberration since I captured about 50 specimens and all 50 were marked exactly the same.

Another interesting story about Catocala charlottae, but I have to pin and spread a backlog of freshly collected material. I run my traps daily right before sundown, and we are able to collect here 365-366 days every year. So I may address that species when I get more time. Note too that I have discovered 8 new Catocala species in Louisiana, but only described three of them so far. I long ago discovered that there are at least a million people out there that all consider themselves 'Catocala experts'.

[Chuck]

Vernon, how much did having lengthy series of specimens contribute to your recognition of potential new species?

For me, if I have one specimen that looks a bit different, I'd just write it off as a variant/ form. If I have twenty of something that looks consistently different, it makes me ask why.

[bobw]

For me, if I have one specimen that looks a bit different, I'd just write it off as a variant/ form. If I have twenty of something that looks consistently different, it makes me ask why.

I think everyone can agree with that. I've found a few taxa described a long time ago from a single specimen. When, many years later, series have been procured from the same locality, it's shown that the original holotype was nothing more than an aberration of another taxon. It just shows that no new taxa should be described from a single specimen.

[jhyatt]

Vernon, how much did having lengthy series of specimens contribute to your recognition of potential new species?

For me, if I have one specimen that looks a bit different, I'd just write it off as a variant/ form. If I have twenty of something that looks consistently different, it makes me ask why.

This reminds me of something my friend Ulf Eitschberger once wrote in a paper somewhere (in my rough translation): "A series can never be too long!"

I agree, but eventually the problem of storage space does rear its ugly head.

Cheers,
jh

[vabrou]

I agree with Chuck, Bobw and John Hyatt. When I began my past 54 years of non-stop collecting I was employed working 70-80 per week for about 7-8 years. And I spent 15-20 hours each week driving to and from work. Despite this dilemma, this is what cause me to create my various automatic capture insect traps and though I reduced my working hours over the decades, conversely my numbers of traps increased to ~500 units today. But now we (Charlotte & Vernon) are physically unable to continue our work due to our ages. It took us 2 full years to stop hundreds of our traps and stored most of them away. Sold a bunch of our traps to fellow entomologist. Today we are only operating one 460 watt mv insect trap and 46 semiochemical lure traps (for clearwing moths). Here on my little 10 acres home site all of my traps are placed so I can ride my lawn tractors right up within inches of my hanging traps without having to dismount out of the seat. And I follow the trail of traps mostly around the property line perimeter (see example of trap placements in 2010).

What did we discover? Actually an enormous amount of never before compiled data. What was eye-opening was that the majority of the existing publicly-published scientific literature is made up of non-factual anecdotal suppositions, an other words, just unsupported opinions stated as fact. There is a large amount of misidentified species among our library references. We were able to uncover these matters by daily data collecting along our half century adventures. No one anywhere has done this before. It is especially difficult to impossible for those researchers located in more unfriendly wintry locals to accomplish what we did (never turning off our traps for 54 years). All of our work has been self-funded.

Regarding the insects themselves, we discovered that insect populations are fluid, species populations over years and decades move in and out of particular areas. Then these populations may repeat over decades their movements again and again. Though at the Abita entomological study site (our 10 acre homesite) we never operated over 180 insect traps in any year. Who knew we be able to trap continuously for over half a century documenting taking billions of adult insects at this one location without decimating the the wild populations of insects. We are still discovering new lepidoptera (species) state records now over a half century later at this same very location. Imagine, we have discovered over 400 species of moths new to science in Louisiana, mostly right here at our home, as that is where the most trap-hours have been logged. We have attached two jpgs illustrating a few of the hundreds of species we have discovered here, which have been described. Charlotte and I have come to the realization that the insects have won, as soon we too will be moving out of this location, permanently.

All along we have permanently documented our lifetime of discoveries in (461) print publications (and freely available as pdfs on the web) for the benefit of future workers. The most beneficial past Louisiana lepidoptera publication to us was published 161 years ago von Reizenstein, Ludwig. 1863. Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of New Orleans and its vicinity. Isaac T. Hinton. New Orleans, 10pp. Perhaps others in future centuries will find our publications and discoveries helpful. John, Ulf understood the true value of having large quantities of study materials. Initially I realized that if I can capture 2 rare specimens using 10 traps, I could capture 20 if I operated 100 traps. And so I did. By using traps, one can collect without having to log massive man-hours daily in the field. I am able to just pick up the results of collecting daily without physically spending large amounts of time in the field collecting.