 The status of the genus is constantly in a state of flux, as various authorities on different continents have vastly different opinions about which (if any) of the dozens of subgenera traditionally recognized within the genus are deserving of being accorded status as independent genera.Moreover, this is one of the few insect taxa in which the rank of subspecies has traditionally been used repeatedly, and essentially no two classifications consistently treat the various members of the genus as to which are species and which are subspecies.Treated as a single genus, and even with a fairly conservative estimate of species, there are over 850 (or even up to 2,300) species in the group (thus being almost equal to the subtribe Cicindelina (W.Horn, 1908), with several thousand published names applied, collectively.