Lema - Lema daturaphila

For what it's worth.

I stumbled onto this by accident, but it tweeked my curiosity. It looks like [at least] two species included under this name to me. This one looks like Lema trilinea as I [sort of] learned it. I'm not expert, but the two do look different. L. daturaphila eing such a new name for such a common insect, there must be more to the story. I don't really know much about why the name was published, and applies to common insects that seem to already have had names (I haven't tried to find the explanation yet).

That aside, the comment about ages of names is correct. If L. trilinea is a valid name (I don't know if it is), it cannot be replaced by the much newer name L. daturaphila. Personally, I have found that ITIS is loaded with mistakes, duplications, omissions, and inconsistencies, so I tend to ignore the listing altogether. But the treatment of Lema there does beg questions. Anyway, ITIS seems to just be a compilation of data, and apparently replicates any mistakes it's sources may have included.

Hopefully someone who really know the ins and outs of the genus will catch this and chime in.

… David J. Ferguson, 18 December, 2009 - 2:22pm

Moved

Moved from Lema trilinea.

… john and jane balaban, 3 July, 2008 - 8:44am

What happened to the Lema trilinea page?

… margarethe brummermann, 3 July, 2008 - 9:54am

Sorry, should have linked to the discussion

on this image

What we think we understand from all the comments so far is that the lighter eastern beetles were called trilinea or trilineata while the darker California ones were called daturaphila. They have now all been lumped, but the question is "Into what"? ITIS has them all lumped into daturaphila and that's where most of the images were on BugGuide, so we deleted the trilinea page we made yesterday and moved all the images here till it gets decided by the beetle experts.

… john and jane balaban, 3 July, 2008 - 2:05pm

What or who is ITIS? I want t

What or who is ITIS? I want to inquire as to why daturaphila is preferred over trilinea. Unless someone has done recent research to warrant separating the two forms, daturaphila is too young a name to override trilinea.

… John R. Watts, 7 July, 2008 - 7:57am

We've attached the ITIS

link here for whatever it is worth.

On BugGuide we have used American Beetles - Volume 1 and Volume 2 as our authority with some exceptions. We think folks have been using Riley, Catalog of the leaf beetles of America north of Mexico, as the Chrysomelid authority but we're not certain. Some of the beetle specialists can give you the correct information on this.

… john and jane balaban, 7 July, 2008 - 8:32am

Moved

Moved from Lema.

… john and jane balaban, 2 July, 2008 - 9:15pm

Lema trilinea

The dark head keys this species out to Lema trilinea

… John R. Watts, 2 July, 2008 - 9:02pm