Cuba Preview

[Padfield]

South Florida is biogeographically very close to the West Indies, to the extent that it is included in the classic work on the region, The Butterflies of the West Indies and South Florida, by Smith et al., illustrated by the incomparable Richard Lewington. To quote from this work : 'Not only is extreme southern Florida set apart from the rest of the continent by climate and vegetation, its butterfly fauna shows a unique mingling where, in a narrow zone of the mainland and its satellite islands, species with centres of distribution in the West Indies predominate over those whose affinities lie to the north'. The book was published in 1994 and is now out of date in many ways, but it's definitely worth having if you can get hold of a copy.

Guy

[petesmith]

Love shots that uplift the spirits. Certainly some of these are familiar to me from the Florida Everglades. Sounds like a great trip.

Thanks Aeshna - it was certainly a fabulous trip - and many of the species were around in very good numbers. I have never seen the Malachite in such abundance!

[NickMorgan]

Fantastic report, Pete, of what sounds like a wonderful trip. I noticed you had posted a couple of weeks ago, but decided to save reading your post until all our Christmas guests had left, so that I could concentrate on it better!!
It looks like you saw a great variety of butterflies. Some of those blues and hairstreaks look tricky to identify and I don't know how anyone can separate all the skippers in Central America.
I have downloaded the field guide for Cuba. It looks like an interesting read and great additional information to add to all the books I have collected over the years.
Sorry to hear you were ill, but it sounds as though it could have benefited your butterfly hunting!
And I agree, Pieridae are very underrated and are my favourite family of butterflies, particularly the yellows.
Have you managed to work out how many species you saw?

[petesmith]

Fantastic report, Pete, of what sounds like a wonderful trip.
It looks like you saw a great variety of butterflies.
Have you managed to work out how many species you saw?

Thanks Nick. The diversity of species was tremendous. We managed to positively identify a total of 46 species, which doesn't sound that many until you consider that these were all found in two weeks, in an area of just a few square miles. If you spent an entire year on Cuba and travelled extensively across the whole island the maximum potential species count would be around 200, so getting about 25% of the total island list in such a short space of time wasn't a bad result!

We did also see several additional species that we didn't get to ID - these included several "Monarch-like" butterflies that were either Soldiers, or Queens, or possibly both, but they weren't settling to be photographed or observed closely enough to be certain. There were also a few other Swallowtails that we never got close to but saw a few of - probably Bahamian or Schaus's Swallowtails judging by their appearance in flight - but not ID'd - and of course inevitably there were skippers that didn't get photographed, so our total number of species seen probably exceeded 50.

Confirmed species were as follows:

Baracoa Skipper Polites baracoa baracoa
Barred Yellow Eurema daira palmira
Boisduval's Yellow Eurema boisduvaliana
Caribbean Banner Lucinia sida sida
Caribbean Daggerwing Marpesia eleuchea eleuchea
Caribbean Skipper Pyrrhocalles antiqua orientis
Cassius Blue Leptotes cassius theonus
Ceraunus Blue Hemiargus ceraunus filenus
Cloudless Sulphur Phoebis sennae sennae
Cuban Common Calisto Calisto herophile
Cuban Crescent Anthanassa frisia frisia
Cuban Dorantes Longtail Cecropterus dorantes santiago
Dainty Sulphur Nathalis iole
Dina Yellow Pyrisitia dina dina
Fulvous Hairstreak Electrostrymon angelia angelia
Gray Ministreak Ministrymon azia
Great Southern White Ascia monuste eubotea
Gulf Fritillary Agraulis vanillae insularis
Julia Dryas Iulia nudeola
Lime Swallowtail Papilio demoleus
Limenia Scrub Hairstreak Strymon limenia
Little Yellow Pyrisitia lisa euterpe
Long-tailed Skipper Urbanus proteus domingo
Malachite Siproeta stelenes biplagiata
Mallow Scrub Hairstreak Strymon istapa cybira
Many-banded Daggerwing Marpesia chiron chironoides
Martial Scrub Hairstreak Strymon martialis
Mesogramma Skipper Atalopedes mesogramma mesogramma
Mexican Fritillary Euptoieta hegesia hegesia
Miami Blue Cyclargus thomasi noeli
Mimosa Yellow Pyrisitia nise nise
Monarch Danaus plexippus
Nickerbean Blue Cyclargus ammon
Orion Cecropian Historis odius odius
Phaon Crescent Phyciodes phaon phaon
Polydamas Swallowtail Battus polydamas cubensis
Potrillo Skipper Autochton potrillo potrillo
Silver Emperor Doxocopa laure druryi
Southern Dogface Zerene cesonia cesonia
Tailed Orange Pyrisitia proterpia
Three-spotted Skipper Cymaenes tripunctus tripunctus
Tropical Buckeye Junonia zonalis
Tropical Checkered Skipper Burnsius oileus
White Peacock Anartia jatrophae guantanamo
White-angled Sulphur Anteos clorinde nivifera
Zebra Longwing Heliconius charithonia ramsdeni

Just over ten months until your Costa Rica trip...hopefully by the end of this year we will all be enjoying your report and photographs from there

[NickMorgan]

That is a great haul Pete. I guess a "problem" with visiting such places with enormous numbers of species is that, with so many being so similar, it is very difficult to identify them unless they stop for a while, or allow a nice picture of the upper and underside! This isn't really too much of an issue with most places I have visited, but I can see it being an enormous issue in Costa Rica. I have picked up a few second-hand books through AbeBooks to add to other Central American books I have and I notice that many of the species are very similar to each other!
It doesn't help that some species have wet and dry season forms, too!
Interestingly, when you mentioned the Tropical Buckeye in your Costa Rica reports you were referring to Jenonia genoveva. I thought to myself that when I was in St Lucia they called J genoveva the Mangrove Buckeye and they called J evarete the Tropical Buckeye. I notice that in Cuba, your Tropical Buckeye is J zonalis!! Further complication with different common names used in different countries!!
Yes, only ten months now!! I can't believe that it will ever happen and I am so looking forward to my trip. I will make the effort to put a report onto the forum. I have been rather remiss in recent years, but it will be interesting to compare what I see with what you have seen.