Lepidopterology's "Blue Bomb" Controversy: A Comment on Ehrlich and Murphy

Abstract

Ehrlich and Murphy (1983) have brought to the attention of the Systematic Zoology readership a dispute which has been ongoing in the lepidopterological community since the publication by Miller and Brown (1981a) of a catalog and check list of the butterflies of North America north of Mexico. Miller and Brown's (1981a) blue-covered book, known to many as the Blue Bomb, increased by nearly 40% the number of generic names in use within the area treated by adopting nomenclature from revisionary works of groups outside the area, as well as resurrecting older valid names. Their classification was used in a recent popular field guide (Pyle, 1981) and also appeared in a somewhat more conservative form as part of a larger Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico (Hodges et al., 1983). Ehrlich and Murphy (1981a, b, 1983) have attacked these usages, claiming that Miller and Brown have created by fiat (1981a:6) a problematic and radically new nomenclature for North American butterflies. Since many other lepidopterists prefer a nomenclature more approximate to the recent common usages for North American butterflies (as in such popular works as Ehrlich and Ehrlich [1951] or Howe [1975]), Ehrlich and Murphy reasoned that two competitive latinized nomenclatures might relegate butterfly nomenclature to usage of the common names (Ehrlich and Murphy, 1981a, 1983; Murphy and Ehrlich, 1983). Irrespective of the validity of this view, however, Ehrlich and Murphy (1981a) dropped a second bomb into the dispute by proposing legislation through the Lepidopterists' Society to freeze the nomenclature for the butterflies of North America based on Howe (1975)-a proposal they restated (with inadequate detail) in Systematic Zoology along with supportive arguments. Their freeze proposal, by which editors should routinely reject any work that suggests generic name changes from those in Howe if it does not contain a thorough biological justification for the changepolyphyly or imbalance (Ehrlich and Murphy, 1981a:8), had significant impact on the lepidopterists' community. This was due not only to Ehrlich's (1958) noteworthy contributions to the higher classification of butterflies and their taxonomy in the Nearctic (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1951), but because Ehrlich and Murphy cited in their acknowledgments the names of some 50 well-known professional and amateur lepidopterists who, they said, supported their proposal. Their proposal was also controversial because it was published in the alternative journal of lepidopterology, the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera, after apparent rejection by the Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society (Mattoni, 1981; Ehrlich and Murphy, 1981a). The Lepidopterists' Society was the publisher of Miller and Brown (1981a).