Butterflies of the World, Supplement 13 [English] The Genus Parides - An Unended Quest

About this book

Language: English

From the introduction:

"The Papilionidae are separated into two subfamilies, the Parnassiinae and the Papilioninae. Among them, the genus Parides Hübner, [1819] has been studied by several authors, but only Miller (1987b) subjected it to a cladistic analysis and showed it to be an unresolved monophylum within Troidini, encompassing terminal taxa with South American (subgenus Parides) and Oriental distributions (subgenera Panosmia and Atrophaneura). Various authors have often guessed that this grouping is too homogeneous to detect diagnostic characters which may discriminate species or groups of species. [...] The problems regarding identification of Parides fernales are well-known. [...] Why publish a study on Parides, then? For the simple reason that having observed most of the species for a long time in the field, a bit more information and speculation may be added after the milestone of Rothschild and Jordan and the more recent, eclectic book of Tyler, Brown & Wilson. But also because I hope that my synthesis of information gathered in a period of 30 years will be useful to improve knowledge of this taxon, as well as the objective necessity for periodical rationalization of information in every scientific topic.

The outline of the captions for each taxon in the Systematic Account is as follows: The nominate subspecies is usually treated at length, with synonymy range and map, descriptions of the adults, illustrations and description of genitalia, general observations and pre-imaginal stages. This is then followed by consideration of each associated subspecies. The synonymy for each taxon is compiled with notes on the relevant types. [...] The maps depict the range of each species, showing the related subspecies. [...] Genitalia drawings have been made from unmounted material preserved in vials with alcohol and glycerol. [...] The distribution of poorly known taxa is arranged according to states, provinces and localities, for widespread taxa only state and province is outlined."

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