Catocala semirelicta ssp. hippolyta Strecker, 1874

Gall, Lawrence & Hawks, David, 2010, Systematics of moths in the genus Catocala (Lepidoptera, Erebidae) IV. Nomenclatorial stabilization of the Nearctic fauna, with a revised synonymic check list, ZooKeys 39 (39), pp. 37-83 : 56

Catocala semirelicta ssp. hippolyta Strecker , stat. n.

Catocala hippolyta Strecker, 1874: 99

Catocala hippolyta ; Barnes and McDunnough 1918: 30

Catocala hippolyta ; McDunnough 1938: 116

Catocala hippolyta ; Franclemont and Todd 1983: 129

Type material. Catocala hippolyta : lectotype ♁ [ FMNH, examined], designated by Gall and Hawks (1990: 10). Barnes and McDunnough (1918: 30) stated “the species is only known from the Coast Range of California extending from Sonoma County to Los Angeles County.” Although C. hippolyta has been treated as an endemic coastal Californian species, it in fact comes into contact with C. semirelicta Grote, 1874 along the eastern and northern edges of its geographic range in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where the two blend into one another. Moreover, during the past several decades, Paul and Sandy Russell have collected from one locality in the Santa Barbara foothills a series of C. hippolyta that contains specimens indistinguishable from typical C. semirelicta . We thus feel the observed geographic variation in C. hippolyta and C. semirelicta is more indicative of two subspecies. Type Locality: San Mateo County, California, [ USA].