#don't mind me rambling about butterfly taxonomy on main now

[thethingything]

"oh those three butterflies look really similar. I wonder how you tell the difference between them since people are pretty confidently saying 'yeah this is definitely this one' on iNat..."

[transcript: The taxonomic status of this taxon remains unclear. Additional DNA work is needed to resolve relationships and name issues (Davenport 2018). Disagreement about the identity of the lectotype (Tilden 1963, Emmel et al. 1998) of Callophrys dumetorum resulted in nomenclatural confusion with dumetorum, viridis, and sheridanii. ICZN opinion 2291, which designated a neotype for dumetorum, means the valid name for the Coastal Green Hairstreak that ranges along the California coast is Callophrys viridis, not dumetorum (Scott et al. 2012, ICZN 2012). Some authors have suggested that viridis and sheridanii are conspecific (Warren 2005, Scott 2008); if this is accepted, the valid name for this taxa is Callophrys sheridanii viridis because Opinion 2291 preserved the name sheridanii (Scott et al. 2012). end transcript]

okay cool so the Coastal Green Hairstreak (C. viridis) might be a subspecies of the Sheridan's Hairstreak (C. sheridanii) but it sounds like nobody really agrees about this and for a while they thought it was a subspecies of the Lotus Hairstreak (C. dumetorum) and Wikipedia still lists it as a synonym for C. dumetorum and lists "Coastal Green Hairstreak" as a common name for that???