Exoteleia

I'm not sure the evidence supports there being two distinct species. Just sent you an email conversation I've had with others. The two should probably be grouped. Let me know what you think.

I don't know what's going on with these species, other than that pretty much all gelechiid taxonomy is a work in progress. But this image belongs where I placed it, because not only did I rear it, but a specialist (Jean-François Landry) examined it and confirmed my ID. There were some Coleotechnites specimens where, even after dissecting them, he said they could be one of two or more possibilities. But for this one, he said the ID was "certain." I do think it would be wise to group together images of these two species that have not had the ID confirmed, especially those that are at odds with the literature either in terms of geography or appearance.

I apologize, I didn't mean that we should eliminate either species or to infer that Landry was wrong. What I meant was to ask if we should add something like a "pinifoliella group" page and move the two species pages to that no taxon page since it seemed questionable as to whether the DNA evidence was actually separating the two species. (I'm not sure if you looked at Mark's pinifoliella example here. It's really confusing to me.) Or should we leave the two species pages where they are and make an additional "Probably pinifoliella or chillcotti" no taxon page? It sounds like you are leaning toward the latter.

but based on Jean-François' unqualified ID of my specimen, it seems like the status of that species isn't in doubt (I guess that makes sense, since it was described first). Yes, I think a "Probably pinifoliella or chillcotti" page would make sense for the ones we're not sure about. The word "group" implies a formal species group name, and "pinifoliella group" may or may not be a term that has been applied to these moths in the literature.

There are definitely misidentified specimens in BOLD, and I have no way of knowing whether the E. chillcotti confusion has to do with that or with the two species not actually being distinct.

First, thank you John and Jane for making the new chillcotti or pinifoliella page. Unfortunately, I've stumbled on a couple more issues.

Exoteleia burkei, a western species, was collected in Mississippi (reference here) and seems identical to chillcotti. This makes me question the value of a chillcotti or pinifoliella page. Maybe it should be kept with the addition of burkei.

There actually does appear to be a Exoteleia pinifoliella complex which is composed of at least 4 groups but does not appear to include chillcotti according to a 2010 paper here. These 4 groups are represented at BOLD. The BIN page here which includes all the all the chillcotti examples also includes both Mark Dreiling's 2010 pinifoliella examples. It does seem that although Mark's images are listed as pinifoliella, they really are of chillcotti. Both Terry harrison and Ken Childs seem to think that might be the case.

I know we can't make a complex page with chillcotti placed in it but I am wondering if the pinifoliella page should be changed to pinifoliella complex with chillcotti left as is. I think all the north east records should be tentatively moved from chillcotti to pinifoliella complex since the known host and known range for chillcotti are limited to the south. E. burkei is not known in the north east and I'm not aware of any other contenders. Or we could leave it as is. Or move them to burkei, chillcotti, or pinifoliella.