@sunwenhao90 @firos_ak @louisb
I've tagged you because you've shown past activity related to this taxon. Any concerns with this change? Do you know of anyone active in your geographical spheres that may want to have input before this is committed.

@tonyrebelo @stevewoodhall

@sunwenhao90 @firos_ak @louisb @purnendu @tonyrebelo @stevewoodhall

Almost a month has gone by, so I assume we are ok to proceed? Ok?

No objection to the swap, although if I recall correctly there should be a number of other taxa being moved into this genus too (e.g. hecabe)?

Is it only 7?

As I said in the other thread, absolutely do commit them all - provided you're doing it consistently I've got no problem.

I still can't understand where other Australian Eurema species fall out as a result of that paper though - e.g. Eurema smilax, herla, etc. - I would have thought they would be in the same clade as hecabe & brigitta and thus be moved to Terias, but I've not seen any discussion in that regard.

That was my problem with the original paper - there was no clarity as to what taxa / clades were affected. And that confusion seems to have carried on to the discussion here.

I now have a copy of the brigitta paper that disagrees with Zhang et al: Irungbam, M., Irungbam, J.S., Rindos, M., Maresova, J.P. & Fric, Z.F. (2023) Phylogeography of the small grass yellow Eurema brigitta (Stoll, 1780) (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) unveils the existence of distinct taxa within the Palaeotropics. Austral Entomology, 62(4), 410–417. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/aen.12665

It's a well argued paper that sets out the reasons for re-erecting Eurema drona (Horsfield, [1829]) for the Oriental-Australian populations hitherto known as Eurema brigitta. There are a lot of subspecies that will complicate things somewhat:

The following taxa all fall under the binomial E. brigitta in iNaturalist:

• E. b. brigitta – tropical Africa (stays as is) – 765 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. pulchella (Boisduval, 1833) – Madagascar, Mauritius, Comoro Islands, Aldabra Islands (stays as is) – 18 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. drona (Horsfield, [1829]) – Sumatra, Java to Lombok (now E. drona drona) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. senna (C.&R.Felder, [1865]) – Peninsular Malaya, Singapore, Indochina (now E. drona senna) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. fruhstorferi (Moore, 1906) – eastern Indo-China (now E. drona fruhstorferi) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. ina Eliot, 1956 – southern Sulawesi (now E. drona ina) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. hainana (Moore, 1878) – Hainan (now E. drona hainana) 14 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. rubella (Wallace, 1867) – Sri Lanka, India, Burma to southern China, Nicobars (now E. drona rubella) 65 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. formosana Matsumura, 1919 – Taiwan (now E. drona formosana) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. yunnana (Mell) (now E. drona yunnana) 0 observations in iNaturalist
• E. b. australis (Wallace, 1867) – Australia, New Guinea, Papua New Guinea (now E. drona australis) 0 observations in iNaturalist

There are 2408 Eurema brigitta binomial records in iNat stretching from West Africa to Fiji, with a few from Central America (those must be erroneous!) There are no records for Eurema drona which is not surprising since it doesn’t yet have a taxon number. Some of the ‘comb. nov’ subspecific names in the taxonomy section of the paper don’t exist in iNaturalist either – lema, dionysia, nebulosa, and sincera. These would all need to be flagged separately I guess.

I also see no reference to a Zoobank registration in the paper. How is the ICZN going to handle the decision to ignore Zhang et al’s names? From what little I know of the ICZN rules their treatment of these taxa as ‘Terias’ has preference, no matter how much we may disapprove of them. Surely these new Eurema names will be nomina nuda?

One of the authors in a personal communication referred to Zhang et al as 'cowboys' and 'taxonomic vandals'. Also the reviewers at the Journal of Austral Entomology didn't pick up on the priority of Terias for these names. This has made water that is already cloudy even muddier!

These would all need to be flagged separately I guess.

No: rather just list them en block under the genus or species, as is most appropriate.
In this case a single flag under Eurema brigitta (or alternatively ?? under Terias brigitta) will deal with the issue.

@tonyrebelo 'In this case a single flag under Eurema brigitta (or alternatively ?? under Terias brigitta) will deal with the issue.' I'd be a bit reluctant to do that since as result Terias drona would need to be created as a new name (as well as all its subspecies) and at present we don't know what its ICZN status is.

There is absolutely no requirement, as far as I know, for iNaturalist taxonomy (i.e., curators) to blindly follow the literature. A peer-reviewed taxonomic paper only presents taxonomic hypotheses (and justifications for why those hypotheses may (or may not) be supported). Indeed, iNat taxonomy is often at odds with the taxonomic literature - there are many cases I could name for birds (which, granted, is partly because iNat adopts Clements taxonomy for that group - but still, the point remains). Given there is now disagreement in the literature between Zhang et al. and Irungbam et al. (which I've not yet read) as to how Eurema (sensu lato) should be arranged, I see even less reason than before to adopt any changes suggested by the former, particularly since I am still yet to see a clear list of which taxa fall under what new classifications (i.e., I do not know what taxon changes need to be made). I appreciate @stevewoodhall giving a summary of the suggestions of Irungbam et al., but am equally going to (personally) hold off on making any changes to that group until a) I have read the paper b) I can properly determine what changes it suggests and c) we (collectively, as curators/users with an interest in this group) can decide on which option to follow in instances where there is disagreement between 1) the status quo 2) Zhang et al. and 3) Irungbam et al.

So, now that I've read the Irungbam et al. paper, I see no explicit disagreement as they don't address Zhang et al.'s taxonomic changes (there's no citation even). The paper is concerned with the species status of brigitta/drona and not with the status of the genus.
Thanks to Zhang et al. Old World Eurema = Terias, and so Irungbam is employing a synonym. The stat. rev. of drona is still be valid, but the proper name to employ is T. drona.

Still no movement.