You are here
Home » Taxonomy » Sphingidae » Smerinthinae » Smerinthini » Laothoe » Laothoe witti » Laothoe philerema subsp. witti - Eitschberger, Danner & Surholt, 1998 [Invalid]
Taxonomy
Laothoe philerema subsp. witti Eitschberger, Danner & Surholt, 1998 [Invalid]
Nomenclature
-
Genus: LaothoeSpecies: Laothoe witti
Subspecies:
Laothoe philerema subsp. witti Eitschberger, Danner & Surholt, 1998
Usage:
invalid
Unacceptability Reason:
original name/combination
Reference:
Type data:
HOLOTYPE ♂ Afghanistan: 30km NW of Kabul, Paghman, 2100m, 20-30.vii.1962 (E. & A. Vartian) [coll. Eitschberger].
Taxonomic Notes:
Proposed as a subspecies of Laothoe philerema. Implicitly raised to species status by Zolotuhin, 2018, Eversmannia 54: 4.
Zolotuhin (2018: 3) (STI 21919) only gave an explicit statement raising Laothoe witti to species status in the Abstract: “The following taxa are raised here to full specific status based on morphological characters and molecular investigation: L. iberica Eitschberger, Danner & Surholt, 1989, L. populetorum (Staudinger, 1887), L. populeti (Bienert, [1870]), L. sinica (Rothschild & Jordan, 1903) and L. witti Eitschberger, Danner & Surholt, 1998”. However, abstracts are not generally considered to be citable sources of taxonomic and nomenclatural acts. In the main text, Zolotuhin (2018: 4) (STI 21919) treated Laothoe witti as a species but did not explicitly raise it to that status. He did, however, give a (single) reason for doing so, namely that the DNA barcode divergence from Laothoe philerema was 7.2% (a reasonable value between species of non-feeding Smerinthini.