Catocala lineella/amica
In short: I think it's time to combine the lineella and amica species pages into one amica/lineella species complex page.
I know in the LaFontaine/Schmidt checklist (2010), lineella and amica were kept as separate species designations. However, regarding those two species, their checklist simply accepted Gall's elevation of lineella to full species status. Now, I certainly don't want to come off wrong, but when I reviewed Gall's 1990 paper, it seems lineella was elevated to full species based on little more than looking at type specimens in a collection which could have been misidentified themselves, and designating a lectotype for lineella based primarily on the appearance of a single male amica form melanotica (a synonym for lineella), for which no figure had been done. No examination of genitalia or any sequencing was done. This isn't to criticize methodology per se, but to show reasonable doubt regarding the original elevation of lineella and the potential for errors regarding subsequent descriptions of species' appearance and using that for identification.
Also, I've been running through the DNA data for lineella and amica on the BOLD site, and from what I see, I honestly find it hard to justify separating the two (granted I am not professionally trained in interpreting such data). The COI sequence data appears to show such a low divergence between the two species (max < 2.14%, average 0.69%), that sometimes the sequence data between two particular specimens of supposed different species of amica/lineella is statistically identical.
Now, having said that, I'm not going to sit here and dispute the experts on whether or not amica/lineella are justifiably separate species - I accept the current status of each. However, we really have no reliable method to distinguish them by photo - as I said, even their DNA often cannot be distinguished. In reviewing the photos of the DNA identified specimens of lineella and amica, I can find no reliable method to distinguish them by appearance at all. Even genitalic morphology seems ambiguous between the two as well, though I admittedly have limited experience on that aspect with these two species.
That's the situation from my perspective. Keeping them separate means we're going to have a lot of amica/lineella photos forever floating at genus level, while others are arbitrarily placed to species based on which species they are perceived to look closest to. So I think a combined amica/lineella page is the best option for these two in order to be most properly placed in BugGuide. Combining them does nothing to hurt distribution, food, or season data, since they essentially share it all.
Thoughts?
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