Antheraea mexicana

[thanos]

Here is the male of mexicana, just off the board . From Oaxaca, Mexico.
Really very big (much bigger than the A.polyphemus I have, and more beautifully coloured).


Thanos

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[Deleted]

I must get into these, lovely.

[starlightcriminal]

Sats are the best. Does have nice coloring, sort of blush version of the A. polyphemus background. How big is it?

[thanos]

Wingspan is 139 mm. The female I received (which I sent back to seller for replacement,as I received it with some damage) was very huge : I estimated the wingspan if spread to be +15 - 16 cm !! When I will get the new A1 female and spread it, I will measure its wingspan (I hope the new one will be as huge as the one I returned).

[papilio28570]

Well...how big is it? And, isn't this a subspecies of A. polyphemus or was it determined to be a full species?

[thanos]

As far as I know, it's mostly treated as a separate species today : Antheraea(subgenus Telea) mexicana (Hoffman,1942).
I found it on boldsystems as polyphemus mexicana,but there it was fun to see even a male of montezuma among the images.

www.boldsystems.org/views/taxbrowser.php?taxid=163218

I will post a photo of the female soon,indicating the exact wingspan.

[evra]

A lot of the specimens on that website look like Antheraea oculea to me, with the very large eyespots on the forewings and dark scaling that bleeds toward the basal region of the forewing. The specimen you have pictured has markings that are more like A. polyphemus than A. oculea. It's still very nice though.

Of course at one time they were all considered subspecies of polyphemus, and they are all very closely related, with natural hybridization zones.

[thanos]

Yes I noticed the oculea,too,and it's strange how these and montezuma could be put under mexicana there.

[saturniidave]

The problem seems to be that BOLD takes as read the name given with the specimen sent for DNA sequencing even if it is very wrong, some are even synonyms. Look at a few of the Saturniidae pages, you will see many discrepancies. I am led to believe that one day the DNA sequences will all be compared so that species can be properly determined, but until then I will continue to use it only as a tool in conjunction with others.
Dave

[Chris Grinter]

Yes some groups should be better than others, there just needs to be a taxonomist to verify each specimen ID and the backlog is fast outpacing the few people they have working on the leps. I really wonder if it'll ever get done since you either need a revisionary taxonomist to use the BOLD data and clean the mess up - or have an expert on the group visit the Guelph collection and fix it.

It would be nice if they had a "verified" stamp or something for a vetted specimen ID.

[thanos]

I noticed that some of the specimens are of the research collections of knowledgeable persons and is strange that some are misidentified (sent for DNA sequencing with wrong name).

[Chris Grinter]

Just a fact of life, there is always a percentage of error. Even the greatest collectors have mistaken ID's - either their own mistakes or someone else's. Keep in mind these specimens are often entered by teams of interns and there are multiple spots where a mistake can be made. The expert rarely if ever directly inputs the data themselves.

Dr. John Ascher has been building a bee database for quite a while now - and by his estimates every major collection of bees in the US has at least 20% (recalled from memory, close to that figure though) of specimens are either misidentified or have wrong and/or bad data! This figure probably holds true for other groups. And when you realize how vastly understaffed and underfunded museums are there basically is no one checking ID's unless that group happens to be their specialty.