I’m new to iNaturalist, and not an expert scientist, but trying to learn some of the things I see in nature.
I was scrolling through observations in my area (New Hampshire, USA) and saw a post of an unknown species which I believed to be common ringlet. I went to suggest the ID, but saw the Latin name in iNaturalist for common ringlet is listed as Coenonympha california.
That didn’t seem right, so I checked my Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America and that only has two species of Coenonympha – tullia or haydenii. Since tullia is listed as the “Common ringlet” I was about to suggest that as an ID, but iNaturalist calls it the Large Heath. So I thought that could be right, because I understand common names have a lot of variation regionally, but when I checked the species it only showed a scattering of IDs in Alaska and Europe, and none in the mainland U.S.
BugGuide also only uses tullia and heydenii, with the rest listed as subspecies. So now I’m confused about how to identify a Common Ringlet that is found in the Northeast US.
The species page for Coenonympha california shows IDs stretching from the West Coast to the East, but I’m wondering if that’s right. And identifying it as tullia makes it seem like a big aberration from the rest of the observations.
I’m not a butterfly expert by any means, so take it with a grain of salt, but here’s what I can find.
It looks like there’s been some controversy over the correct name for this species. Most sources list it as “Coenonympha tullia ssp california”, and it looks like iNat itself has changed between that name and C california a couple of times: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes?taxon_id=69145
There’s a flag about it on the species page suggesting it be changed back: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/575048
This is the study that seems to have caused the current name choice:
https://lepsurvey.carolinanature.com/ttr/ttr-8-7.pdf
From the article:
“In summary, according to our genomic analysis, both C. tullia
and C. california are present in North America, and all American taxa of the tullia complex other than the northernmost subspecies C. t. kodiak, C. t. mixturata and C. t. yukonensis belong to C. california.”
From BugGuide: " Coenonympha is a primarily Eurasian genus, with only two species [usually] recognized in North America, and at least one of these also widespread in Eurasia. There is much debate about species limits in this genus, and some would have C. tullia as found in North America divided into multiple species, each representing local populations, as well as considered entirely distinct from Eurasian C. tullia. In North America the genus is found mostly in northern and mountain regions, as well as far south as far as northern Baja California along the Pacific coast."
Excellent, thank you. That answers it. My field guide is already obsolete, haha. I’ll leave butterfly ID’ing to the experts.
You can still give an ID to genus level - better than leaving it with no ID.
(This is being said as someone who is no expert on anything - but spends a lot of time giving very basic IDs to old “unknowns”. If I found this observation in a year or so, I’d be IDing it as “butterflies”.)
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