Sphingidae I.D.'s and I.D. conformations requested

Hi Jeff,
This is what is written in Hawkmoths of the World by Kitching and Cadiou, 2000:

"Sphinx pholus Cramer (1776: 137) is a junior primary homonym of Sphinx pholus Drury (1773): index), currently placed in Arctiidae: Lithosiinae as Lyphomorpha pholus (Fletcher and Nye 1982).
There is no objective replacement name, but Sphinx pholus Cramer is currently considered to be conspecific with Sphinx choerilus (Cramer 1779: 91), which is thus available as a subjective replacement name."

There is a much more detailed explanation of why choerilus is
appropriate in following the rules of the Code in the Hawkmoths of the World by James P. Tuttle 2007.

All three of those authors are world renowned for their work with Sphingidae and are well versed in rules of the Code.

Can you provide the name and author of a reference text which states that choerilus is in violation of the Code, or that pholus should still be utilized instead of choerilus according to the Code?

Believe me, it is not much fun to be updating webpages with name corrections, but when those changes are in accordance with the Code, it seems the appropriate thing to do. Perhaps you have your moths, which I now identify as Darapsa choerilus, labelled as Sphinx pholus, which someone might misinterpret
as the old name for the Arctiidae species mentioned above.

I believe Cramer violated the Code in 1776 or 1779 when he used a name (genus and species) which was already assigned to another species. In the same year, Cramer described another moth (same species) as Sphinx choerilus. Sphinx choerilus was then generally recognized as the correct name for the moth depicted by Rev. Ferrier, but Rothschild and Jordan, 1903, pointed out the erroneous type locality (West Indies) of the first moth decribed by Cramer, 1779, but did not correct the name from pholus to choerilus in their publication. Hence some confusion ensued.

When Walker (1856) designated the type species for the genus Darapsa, he chose the Darapsa choerilus name correctly enterred by Cramer in 1779 as the replacement for pholus, incorrectly enterred by Cramer earlier in the same year.

I am currently doing updates to Saturniidae species lists based on the many new names put forward by Brechlin and Meister, based largely on DNA barcoding analysis. There are hundreds of new names assigned to moths which have been in various collections for many years, named according to earlier classifications, now to be reassigned. It is not fun, and I think some of the new names may pan out to actually be synonyms of older names, but I think most of the new names will stand the test of time.

There is probably no good reason for you or any other collector to change your labels under "Darapsa pholus" to Darapsa choerilus, but if you were to drop them off at a museum and the museum had the space to keep them and the time to correct labels, the labels would probably be changed to Darapsa choerilus. If you were to put the moths on public display, I am hoping you would use the name the Code approves, Darapsa choerilus.

Bill Oehlke