 The type specimen was recovered from California.It was treated generally as a species (though it included "Adelpha eulalia" as a synonym) until 1944, when the entomologists Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter and Bertram Maurice Hobby reclassified it as a subspecies of "Adelpha bredowii".Recent phylogenetic studies, however, conclude that morphological, geographical, and genetic evidence make it clear that it is a separate species.