Grammia, Rambur, 1866

Schmidt, B. Christian, 2009, Taxonomic revision of the genus Grammia Rambur (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae: Arctiinae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 156 (3), pp. 507-597 : 508-509

HISTORY OF GRAMMIA TAXONOMY

The first Grammia species to be named was Bombyx virgo , by Carolus Linnaeus (1758) in his seminal Systema Naturae, and the majority of Grammia names were proposed by A. R. Grote, B. Neumögen, H. Strecker, and R. H. Stretch, all of whom figure prominently in the nomenclature of North American moths. Neumögen & Dyar (1894) included the Grammia -group of genera ( Grammia , Apantesis Harris , Notarctia M.E. Smith ) in their treatment of North American moths, uniting all these in one genus, Euprepia Hübner , with five constituent species-groups. These groups were based on wing pattern similarities, and largely did not correspond to subsequent groupings, with the exception of the Apantesis group, which was subsequently recognized as Apantesis ( Table 1). Hampson (1901) included all three currently recognized genera under Apantesis , also including the species Atlantarctia tigrina (de Villers) [as Apantesis fasciata (Esper) , a junior synonym]. McDunnough (1938) maintained the genus name usage of Hampson (1901) ( Table 1).

The species of Grammia were first revised by Marion Smith in an unpublished doctoral thesis ( Smith, 1938a), which also included species now placed in the genera Apantesis and Notarctia . This work was unfortunately published only as a 12-page abstract ( Smith, 1938b). Smith (1938a) included the modern concept of Grammia , Notarctia , and Holarctia (revised status, see below) as subgenera of Callarctia Packard , and treated Apantesis separately ( Table 1). Smith (1938a) recognized 22 species of Grammia , compared to the 24 species listed by McDunnough shortly prior to her revision in his ‘Check List of the Lepidoptera of Canada and the United States’ ( McDunnough, 1938). Five taxa treated as species by McDunnough (1938) were informally synonymized by Smith ( Arctia quadranotata Strecker , Apantesis gibsoni McDunnough , Arctia elongata Stretch , Arctia intermedia Stretch , and Arctia oithona Strecker ), and three taxa were raised to species status ( Arctia quenselii ab. complicata Walker , Arctia edwardsii Stretch , and Apantesis ornata hewletti Barnes & McDunnough ). Smith (1938a) did not describe any new species, but, more importantly, provided the genusgroup names Holarctia M.E. Smith and Notarctia . To this end, Smith’s most significant contribution to Grammia taxonomy was in defining groups based on structural characters of the larvae, pupae, and adult genitalia, her work reflected in the modern concepts of the two Grammia subgenera ( Mimarctia and Grammia ), Apantesis and Notarctia , although these genera/subgenera were not formally recognized for nearly another 50 years ( Table 1).

Shortly after Smith’s work, Eugene Munroe summarized Grammia , Apantesis , and Notarctia in an unpublished MSc thesis, wherein he maintained the generic and subgeneric usage proposed by Smith (1938a, b), and further grouped the subgenus Grammia (as Callarctia , subgenus Callarctia ) into three species groups based on general wing pattern similarities ( Munroe, 1941). No new species or synonymies were proposed by Munroe, although he recognized Arctia quadranotata Strecker and Arctia elongata Stretch as distinct species.

The generic and subgeneric definitions proposed by Smith were not adopted by Forbes (1960) or Franclemont (1983), both of whom included under Apantesis all species under the current concepts of Grammia , Notarctia , and Apantesis ( Table 1). The current generic arrangement follows that proposed by Ferguson (1985), who was the first to apply the name Grammia to North American taxa, following Inoue et al. (1982) who applied Grammia to Grammia quenseli (Paykull) . New Grammia species were described by Ferguson (1985), Dubatolov & Schmidt (2005), and Ferguson & Schmidt (2007), the latter providing a review of the Grammia nevadensis group.

The paucity of genitalic variation amongst species and even species-groups of Grammia has been a significant impediment to the taxonomy of this genus, compounded by the apparent rarity of many western species. The discovery of additional morphological characters ( Ferguson & Schmidt, 2007; this revision), coupled with the availability of a greater number of museum specimens, has however provided a muchimproved taxonomic resolution of this group. As discussed below, the taxonomic utility of mitochondrial DNA data (cytochrome oxidase I gene) has proven to be minimal, and in fact points to a significant decoupling of genomic integrity from mitochondrial DNA genealogy ( Schmidt & Sperling, 2008).