[TN-Butterflies] punctuation marks on Eastern Comma and Question Mark--revision
- From: "Steve Stedman" <birdsongteam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <tn-butterflies@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 06:52:18 -0600
The punctuation marks on the ventral sides of the hindwings of the Polygonia
species are apparently incorrect for the actual species on which they appear on
some percentage of individuals, but the percentage of individuals so marked is
currently unknown (to me at least).
Michael Bierly recently provided an example of a Question Mark with a
punctuation mark that looks much like the punctuation mark found on Eastern
Comma.
During a butterfly count in western Putnam County in 2008, I found an Eastern
Comma with the perfect punctuaton mark for Question Mark on each of its
hindwings below. You may view photos of this individual at my website (link
below).
The frequency of such punctuational inversion among Polygonia would be good to
establish. Does anyone else have photos providing the kind of evidence that
Michael provided recently or that I provided a couple of years ago? If this is
a relatively frequent (i.e., occurring in more than 1% of individuals)
aberration, then it might be worthwhile to require dorsal photos of these
species to establish a county record rather than trusting the ventral photos.
[In this regard, however, I would also note that the Eastern Comma with
punctuation marks like a Question Mark that I photographed in 2008 also had a
very "ghostly" image of the rectangular spot in the dorsal forewing apex that
supposedly confirms that an individual is a Question Mark, so maybe there are
individuals out there that display aberrant versions of this mark also--i.e.,
Eastern Commas with the extra rectangular mark and Question Marks without it.]
If punctuational inversion is an insignificant problem (occurring on less than
1% of individuals), and if it occurs about equally in each species, then
perhaps it won't affect county records much, since these species seem to be
about equally common in most parts of the state where I am an active
butterflier (so a mistake about one species might be balanced by a mistake
about the other). However, if the inversion problem is more common in one
species than the other, then it could be worth worrying about.
In dealing with aberrant individuals, of which nature surely provides many
examples, I find it most useful to present the aberration in a forthright
manner rather than asking folks to guess what it might be. The goal is not to
make folks look bad when they mess up on an i.d. because the features they have
learned turn out not to be totally reliable; rather, the goal is to forewarn
our friends about pitfalls they might encounter in the effort to correctly i.d.
individuals butterflies and moths so that they avoid turning in photos of
county record 'flies that are, in fact, incorrect.
Hope to hear more about the polymorphic punctuation marks of the Polygonia. I
have to think that there is a voluminous literature out there about this very
matter.
Steve Stedman
Cookeville (Putnam County)
Link to page with links to photos of Eastern Comma with punctuation marks like
those of Question Mark:
http://iweb.tntech.edu/sstedman/ButterflyCount--PutnamCountyWest.htm
Other related posts:
