Battaristis nigratomella

I spent quite a bit of time over the past few days reading about Battaristis nigratomella and Battaristis concinnusella. I've come to the conclusion that these are the same species unless they can be more adequately separated with more data. For now, I will be treating them as the same and logging observations as B. nigratomella. Reading in the literature, there is some debate whether they are distinct species or not. The only difference apparently is the ground color of the base of the forewings, but even that is not clear.

I decided to look at data available at BOLD. For the entries labeled as one of these species, a phylogenetic tree created from that data shows a significant overlap. There are only a couple dozen total entries there, though. BOLD identifies 3 BINs in one of these species and 2 in the other. What happens if the same species is given two different species labels on BOLD? Will it create two separate BINs for them when unlabeled they would be in the same BIN? That's a question that comes to mind. So in reality the number of BINs would be some number between 3 and 5.

Looking at the whole genus, there is also intersection with entries labeled Mallaise6677.

Posted on 16 June, 2020 17:54 by victorengel victorengel

Observations

Photos / Sounds

What

Black-faced Twirler Moth (Battaristis nigratomella)

Observer

victorengel

Date

June 11, 2020 10:41 PM CDT

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