Herpetogramma thestealis is now considered restricted to eastern North America. The branch of BIN BOLD:AAA2323 with specimens from the Pacific Northwest refers to Herpetogramma aquilonalis Handfield & Handfield, 2021 (1).

Hi Anita,

I do not know what I did when I put down the measurements. Since I photograph each specimen with one image on graph paper I went back and re-measured total wingspan at 32mm. The 16mm was one wing apparently and the 27 from some other unknown source (maybe at that moment .. 16x2=27). Thanks for calling attention. Had another specimen of this species last week and it also will go in for DNA analysis with an upcoming batch.

Dick

Good, thanks! (I was thinking, "Wow, this sp. sure has a huge variation in size range ...".)

http://bugguide.net/node/view/384200/bgimage suffers from the same phenomenon (which is why I figured it must have some meaning rather than being just a typo :-) ). Could it have been something like rows in a table or spreadsheet that got misaligned, so that every entry was off by one?

Or are they really going thru all the work of spreading specimens for a mounted collection, measuring them & reporting back a value -- in which case these relatively long, thin wings might lose a few mm when the wings are cocked up into std spread-specimen position?

Probably the single wing measure in field but the other was just an error. I posted the 384200 image on the label with 6.35 mm graph behind so an estimate can be made. Check it out. I know different wing positions can result in some variation but what I feel is important is a general size is posted. I create a line of measure as parallel to the costal margin as I can judge running from mid thorax to greatest wing extension. My estimate (which is all I claim) does check out close to a spread specimen with wings exactly perpendicular to the body. I figure with the variation in size between individuals and genders in a species if one is within 5% or so it is valuable as one criteria for determining similarities. So thus my estimate.

My only concern was the (former) mismatch between the wingspan value in the BugGuide specimen size field & the value in the free text below it (accompanying the filename & DNA data). I shoulda ruled out a typo first, before trying to come up with fancy theories. :-) Anyway, happy mothing!