Although nearly everyone agress on the theoretical definition of a species,
putting theory into practice is very difficult. It's not suprising, therefore,
that different systematists sometimes arrive at different concepts of where
the species differences lie. This page compares the species and generic
limits used in two commonly used lists of the North American butterflies andskippers;
the species and genera of Paul Opler's field guides to the eastern and western
butterflies and the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) list
of common names of North American butterflies north of Mexico as posted on the
World Wide Web. Only the differences between the two species lists are
shown in the tables below. The NABA equivalents are given in the left column
of the table and the Opler list on the right. If the NABA list shows
sara and the Opler list sara, julia, stella, and
thoosa, then the NABAist recognizes one species sara and
the Opler list divides sara into the four species sara, julia,
stella, and thoosa. As a generalization the Opler species
list recognizes more species than the NABA list, although this tendency is not
consistently true.
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