Probole

Unless there are any objections, I'd like to transfer all images of Probole to P. amicaria and then delete P. alienaria. Although no published work officially synonymizes the two, per Tomon T.T. (2007) (unpublished) there is apparently only one species in that genus. Pohl's 2016 provisional checklist continues to show both species along with a third, P. nepiasaria. I checked BOLD and found all three in the same BIN, BOLD:AAA5915, with much overlap looking at the TaxonID Tree. Leaving P. alienaria seems misleading. I contacted J.D. Roberts and here is his response in it's entirety:

"I've been treating them all as amicaria, and placing nothing to genus or the other species. Personally, I have disregarded the other species, but have not taken the step to ask that the pages be deleted from BugGuide, given the publication of official status change being lacking at the time.

When I was working on the Probole genus, I also tried contacting Tim several times with no response. I did however, get an unexpected reply to an email I sent to Tim, from Dr. Rawlins at Carnegie. He stated;

>>>Mr. Jason Roberts...this is Dr. Rawlins, Carnegie Museum of Natural History.....telling you that Mr. Tim Tomon is now an entomologist, if not The Forest Entomologist employed by the Department of Agriculture in the noble State of West Virginia...he did complete his Master's Thesis at PSU and he is hard at work on the final manuscript that will be published eventually....the outcome is that Probole as we know it consists of a single, highly variable species.....yep, amicaria, nepiasiaria, nyssaria, and alienaria are just one species based on numerous approaches, data sources, and analytical procedures....the senior name is amicaria for the mess!

John

John E. Rawlins, Ph.D.
Section of Invertebrate Zoology
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh PA 15213-4080