Dear Roger, I certainly don't want to start a large discussion here and apologise if my first post appeared a bit too defending, I shouldn't have put it that strong maybe. Ofcourse every citizen science project has to cope with the quality of the data it gathers. I am fully aware of that (check this...

Hi Roger, I don't know where your claim of misidentifications come from. I am a butterfly validator on a Belgian naturalist citizen science platform and I have described the expansion of P. mannii to the Low Countries and its possible drivers in this article here . In the article I also give some in...

Matsukaze wrote:It has a long history of visiting entomologists:

https://archive.org/details/entomologis ... t/page/274

Even Nabokov visited the area in the 1940's. Everyone with large interest in European butterflies should visit that region at least once!

Hi Guy, this is the upperside of the same individual (a male), typical moonshaped discal spot with outer edge of the spot concave (rounded in male P. rapae ), the discal spot wedged between and almost bursting out of vein 3 & 4 (much smaller in P. rapae ), with dusting along the veins from disca...

I would say this is P. rapae , summer generation P. mannii would have much bolder discal frontwing markings and still have some more dusting on underside hindwing (although less obvious than in spring). But I do always favour to see upperside markings with this species pair. The feature of the forke...

Hi, I was in Georgia last summer to search for butterflies and it is a very challenging country to do so. It would help a bit if you could tell more or less at what location/height you made these observations. Your blues are in my opinion Lysandra corydonius , which replaces Chalkhill blue Lysandra ...

Late July - early August I spent three weeks in Romania. I have put a summary of our sightings in four episodes on my blog. Check it out here: http://westpalbutterflies.blogspot.be/2017/08/

Danaus plexippus is present on Lanzarote as well, see the article of Martin Gascoigne-Pees: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273738415_Butterflies_encountered_on_Lanzarote_and_Fuerteventura_between_7_January_and_11_March_2010_with_brief_bionomic_notes It was rather widespread in Fuerteventu...

An interesting article on Pararge species can be found here: http://www.nymphalidae.net/Weingartneretal2006b.pdf Contrary to what might be expected from morphology, we have not discovered any indication that P. a. aegeria and P. a. tircis are separate evolutionary entities based on a mitochondrial g...

A new blogpost on orange skippers in NW Europe. Hope you enjoy:
http://westpalbutterflies.blogspot.be/2 ... urope.html

My knowledge doesn't reach further than Myrmeleontidae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antlion

First of all I want to stress that - apart from some exceptions - a great part of Zygaenidae are very difficult to determine in the field and certainly from just one picture as in lots of cases you need the abdomen pattern, hindwing pattern, shape of the wing, color of antennae and legs,... Some spe...

FYI the monograph of Klaus Schurian on the subgenus Lysandra (in German and from 1989) can nowadays be found online:
http://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Neue-Entomolo ... 1-0181.pdf

Unfortunately I haven't been in that region yet so can't give you much valuable information. You could use the nature observations website much used in the Netherlands and Belgium to find some locations: http://www.observation.org

I guess the authors could be interested to hear about your findings, David Nash of University of Copenhagen will probably be interested as well (see talk 11-1 of the future for butterflies congress last spring: http://vlindernet.nl/doc/future4butterf ... f_2016.pdf)

I agree that early july would probably best to see Erebia palarica and Plebejus pyrenaicus, two of the main specialties of the region (with the first being endemic of NW-Spain).

In fact the initial description of "Maculinea rebeli" comes from a location above the height G. cruciata can be found and recent studies in Austria indicate Gentianella species to be the food plant of those populations, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4023245/

Just before leaving for my next trip, I was able to finish my small report of my june trip to France. 4 episodes on my blog:
http://westpalbutterflies.blogspot.be/2 ... chive.html

Melanargia larissa is the only Melanargia species on Lesvos. Appendix 1b is the most recent published list on butterflies on Lesvos: http://www.phegea.org/Phegea/Appendices ... age_69.pdf

Last night I made a new post on one of the few remaining populations of Sooty copper in Flanders with some small thoughts on personal lifestyle and the influence on butterfly populations.
Hope you enjoy the pics:
http://westpalbutterflies.blogspot.be/2 ... nders.html