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Masters: Collecting Ithomiidae with heliotrope Vol. 22, no. 2
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trips to the Venezuelan frontier were made; to Albert Gadou, who demonstrated the use of heliotrope to me; and to Dr. Richard M. Fox of the Carnegie Museum for his encouragement and assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.
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BOOK REVIEW
GUIDE TO THE CEOMETRIDAE OF CANADA (LEPIDOPTERA). 1. SUBFAMILY STERRHINAE. By W. C. McGuffin. Mem. Ent. Soc. Canada, 50, 1967. 67 pp., 68 color photographs and 44 black and white figures.
This manual is the first in a proposed series designed to "aid in the identification of the Canadian species" of Geometridae, immatures as well as adults. Keys, descriptions, and biological data are presented at the family, subfamily, and generic level. The author recognizes seven genera and 24 species of Sterrhinae as Canadian. He gives brief descriptions of adult maculation and genitalia, and, when known, of eggs, larvae, and pupae. Much of the biological information is the result of his own research. Also included are distribution data for Canada, earliest and latest seasonal records for adult capture, and larval host plants if known.
Illustrations include distribution maps for most of the species; and drawings of such structures as male and female genitalia, hind legs, wing venation, egg, larval head and body chaetotaxy, and pupae. The most outstanding feature of the work, I feel, is the color photographs of the adults. Except for a few "hot" spots on some of the white species, the photographs give excellent representations of the generally faint markings in this group of moths. Many Sterrhinae are polymorphic, and McGuffin illustrates more than one morph in several species.
The work is not a revision, and so does not include reevaluation of the species treated, nor lists of synonymy and exhaustive descriptions. Two errors of a systematic nature bear correction here: the type species of Scopula Schrank is ornata Scopoli, not adornata (p. 11); and Scopula quaesitata (Hulst) (p. 20) is an error in determination (held over from McDunnough's 1938 Check List of the Lepidoptera of Canada and the United States of America, Part 1). The correct name for the moth described in McGuffin's work as quaesitata Hulst is luteolata Hulst (1880, Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc. 3: 42); the type of quaesitata is definitely not a Scopula.
The explanations of figures are unfortunately placed all together in a section in front of the 21 pages of illustrations. The reader is bothered in having to refer back to pages 32-34 to learn what species the figures represent. Also in the explanation section, named morphs are referred to as trinomens giving the false impression that they represent subspecies, e.g. Scopula enucleata mensurata (Walker).
There will be changes in nomenclature and classification of Canadian Sterrhinae in the future, and I feel some of the treatment of species in this work could have been less skimpy; but by and large the additions to biological information and the copious illustrations make this manual a helpful aid in identifying Canadian species of this difficult subfamily.—Charles V. Covell, Jr., University of Louisville, Kentucky.
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