Dear Chris,

You are not alone in getting confused by this one. As David says, several of us have been working on it as we need a sensible answer. So far (having looked at the Perez specimens) it is clear that A. carontonica is not equivalent to A. scotica (as we knew it), but is a synonym of A trimmerana (have checked the Kirby type, as far as one can for the condition of such an old specimen (issues about old types here, but that is a separate story!).

Rob Paxton, Christian Schmid-Egger and I met up in Germany at the end of last year, together with the Perez specimens, a selection of material named by Perkins collected about the time of his 1916 paper (held at The Hope in Oxford), and modern material of trimmerana and ‘scotica’ which had been sequenced by Rob. We were satisfied that there are two different species involved and that the name of one of them is trimmerana (subsequently checked at the NHM against the Kirby type.)

The second species is what has been known as scotica for most of the recent past (it has other accepted synonyms). The issue is now how to tie the name to one of Perkins’ own specimens or one identified by him at the time. We have a call for a search at the Royal Scottish for a possible candidate as his writing mentions dark forms of what he calls trimmerana auct. (= scotica) from Scotland, but I think that an unlikely outcome.

In Germany we identified two series from within the Oxford material as being part of the set Perkins was looking at at the time of the 1916 paper - These might form lectotypes and are clearly labelled as part of our identifications. This material has yet to go back to the Hope.

There is a further issue of where the boundaries of the two species lie, it is clear there are intermediates in the physical characters quoted in all keys and where these should be assigned is not resolved. In an effort to do this we are trying to collect material of both ’species’ for genetic profiling (more than CO1) during this spring.