For the most part, specific names remain constant, though there are exceptions - the large skipper, for example, had to stop being
venatus when the species was split. That name adhered to the eastern species because the type specimen was eastern. For a while
faunus replaced it for the European species but now
sylvanus is regarded as being correct. Where the specific name is adjectival and regarded as qualifying the generic name it also has to agree in gender with that name, meaning that the ending might change when the genus changes. Thus,
Albulina orbitula becomes
Plebejus orbitulus in the new, lumped classification. On the continent, most people refer to butterflies just by their specific name. Vernacular names are pretty useless if you change have to change languages just moving from one end of the valley to the other, as I do in Switzerland! That's the real beauty of scientific names - not that they don't change but that you can sit in a bar in Spain and chat about what you've seen without having to learn a few hundred new names!
The iconic genus
Maculinea was busted quite some time ago. Very interestingly, the species that used to be grouped under that name represent a kind of ecological convergence and are actually genetically quite diverse. If you want
alcon and
arion to be in the same genus you have to expand it to include morphologically and ecologically quite different Asian species in the genus
Phengaris.
Maculinea is not taxonomically valid, not being cladal, so had to go.
Tolman is seriously out of date. No updating was included in the now not-so-new Collins Guide edition and much has happened in the world of taxonomy since the first edition came out. Nevertheless, the forms it describes and illustrates remain valid, if you just rename them!
On my website I stuck with the old genera as long as I could, because the smaller groups are more useful for a field naturalist (it is helpful to distinguish
Boloria from
Clossiana because our species in these two groups are morphologically distinct). But in the end I had to give in to rationalisation! When an old genus is cladal, and so can be regarded as a subgenus, I include it in brackets on my site.
Guy