Catocala pretiosa subsp. texarkana Brower 1976

Catocala texarkana Brower, 1976: 33

Catocala texarkana; Franclemont and Todd 1983: 129

Type material. Catocala texarkana: holotype ♁ [USNM, examined]. When he designated the lectotype for C. pretiosa Lintner, 1876, Schweitzer (1982) aptly noted “separation of Catocala texarkana from C. pretiosa is extremely difficult. At present, some specimens cannot be determined with certainty. Th e original description of C. texarkana does not contain explicit comparisons with related taxa, and I can find no constant differences between these two taxa.” Even though Schweitzer had rather limited specimen material available to him, especially from the southern Appalachians, he was able to find at least one specimen of C. pretiosa (from Massachusetts) that was indistinguishable from three topotypical C. texarkana. We have subsequently examined hundreds of specimens of C. texarkana from over fifty localities from Texas and Oklahoma through the midatlantic states (including Brower’s types, and a morphologically variable series of several dozen topotypes in the CUIC), and find the minor differences between C. pretiosa and C. texarkana to be essentially as stated by Schweitzer, but with greater overlap and variability. These differences are best reflected by placing C. texarkana as a subspecies of C. pretiosa Lintner, 1876. Type Locality: Forestburg, Texas, [USA].