Species Furcula gigans - Hodges#7939.1

7939.1

Furcula gigans (McDunnough, 1922)

Furcula furcula (Clerk, 1759)

Phalaena furcula Clerk, 1759

Cerura gigans McDunnough, 1922

Cerura decorum Dyar, 1922

St Laurent et al. 2023 resurrects Furcula gigans as the name to be applied to the North American population of what Miller 2018 called Furcula furcula:

"In our analyses we included the following three relevant taxa: nominotypical F. furcula furcula from the United Kingdom, what was called ‘F. furcula’ in Miller et al. (2018) from Colorado, USA, and F. occidentalis from New York, USA. The phylogenetic results recover the two North American taxa as sister species with Old World F. furcula furcula sister to them, rendering ‘Furcula furcula’ sensu Miller et al. (2018) paraphyletic. Fortunately, two available names for American populations exist: deorum Dyar (TL: USA: Colorado, Manitou) and gigans McDunnough (TL: Canada: Alberta, Head of Pine Creek, Calgary), both of which were named in 1922, but with gigans being named earlier (Dyar 1922a, McDunnough 1922). We therefore revalidate F. gigans stat. rev. to be applied to North American populations and synonymize F. deorum syn. nov. with F. gigans."

Furcula furcula (Clerk, 1759) was treated as a senior synonym of Furcula occidentalis (Lintner, 1878) by Schintlmeister (2008, 2013) and Becker (2014). Both species were recognized by Miller, 2018. (1) F. furcula was subsequently split by St Laurent et al. 2023, making Furcula furcula extralimital to North America.

BC, AB, MT, UT, CO, NM (1)

Furcula furcula is one of the few moth tautonyms.

Moth Photographers Group (MPG) (2)