Swiss butterflies

[Simon C]

Hi Folks,

I would welcome any suggestions for the IDs of these butterflies, taken last July in the Swiss alps.

Rigi, ~1800m


Melchsee Frutt, ~1900m [Marsh Fritillary?]


Melchsee Frutt


Thanks.

Simon C

[Pete Eeles]

Hi Simon,

I'd go with:

1 & 2 - Titania's Fritillary (Boloria titania)

3 & 4 - I'd actually go with Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia) since it's such a variable species - but I'm less confident about this. I don't think it's Asian Fritillary, Scarce Fritillary or Cynthia's Fritillary.

5 - I'm even less sure of this one, but I'd go for a Mazarine Blue. Although the wingshape makes me think it might not be

So - I look forward to being educated by those in the know

Cheers,

- Pete

[Simon C]

Hi Pete,

Thanks very much. Such a quick response too - I'll have to post some of the others that I've failed to identify to date.

On a technical issue, can you provide any advice on the best way of reducing images down in size. The second image, for example, has fringes around both the leading wing edge and the antenna that are not on the original.

I used a simple utility program (xv) to crop (about 50% of the full image) and rescale (by about a factor 0.25) the original image, and then resaved as a jpeg. The new image size is 28k, about 100 times smaller than the full original. Is this too much of a reduction, or are there ways of rescaling images that lead to small file sizes but retain sharpness.

Any advice would be very welcome.

Simon C

[Pete Eeles]

Hi Simon - my pleasure

I use Paint Shop Pro to reduce images, generally. Anyway, I suggest that you use the "Add image to post" link that appears below the reply text box when replying. This will allow you to upload your full-size image, and it will also create a thumbnail. So you get the best of both worlds.

Cheers,

- Pete

[Matsukaze]

Hi Pete,

I have just jumped to Paint Shop Pro 5 from a very old PSP version (2, I think!). I have noticed that when I edit the jpegs the edited pictures take up far less space on the new version than they used to - is this to be expected?

150 years ago I could have seen that Mazarine Blue locally...

[Simon C]

Only on Sundays!

The other six days you'd have been working down the local pit http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB2/w ... 006&day=21.

And you'd not have your digital compact to capture the moment.

Simon C

[Roger Gibbons]

I would say it is almost certainly a titania’s fritillary (boloria titania), as they are not uncommon in the Alps at high altitudes. It looks very much like the subspecies cypris which, according to the learned books by Tolman & Lewington (1997) and Higgins & Riley (1970), occurs in the Alps from Switzerland eastwards, with the nominate form occurring in the French and western Swiss Alps. Cypris has brown and purple marbling on the underside hindwing and the black markings on the upperside are heavier. I have to say I don’t entirely agree with this distribution as I have seen cypris in the Vercors National Park in France where the nominate form occurred alongside (?). Is this another species named after a classical character – maybe Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

As to the probable marsh fritillary (euphydryas aurinia), it could be the high altitude form debilis, but you would need to get an opinion from an expert on Swiss species.

The blue I would think would have to be a mazarine blue (cyaniris semiargus) as the just-visible underside markings really couldn’t be anything else. The dark blue upperside colour is typical of the male mazarine blues, although the black marginal band looks wider than normal and unusually quite regular in width.

Regarding, the long-ago UK distribution of the mazarine blue, being less (but not much less) than 150 years old, I’ve never seen it in the UK, but it’s fascinating to read the old books from the 1800s. I have a copy of the 1893 work “British Butterflies” by W S Coleman, and it says of the mazarine blue “…was frequently met with some years ago, it has lately become one of our rarest species…”. Strange to think that even in 1893 they were looking back on the good old days.

Coleman also has some interesting things to say about the camberwell beauty (nymphalis antiopa) “…when Camberwell was a real village…certainly not a promising place in the present day for a butterfly hunt, although it has its ‘beauties’ still,…”. The marsh fritillary was then called the greasy fritillary, so maybe renaming it was not such a bad move…

[Pete Eeles]

Hi Pete,
I have noticed that when I edit the jpegs the edited pictures take up far less space on the new version than they used to - is this to be expected?

Yes it is. One of the advances from release to release is the compression technology used, so the reduction in file size wouldn't surprise me at all.

Cheers,

- Pete

[Matsukaze]

Regarding, the long-ago UK distribution of the mazarine blue, being less (but not much less) than 150 years old, I’ve never seen it in the UK, but it’s fascinating to read the old books from the 1800s. I have a copy of the 1893 work “British Butterflies” by W S Coleman, and it says of the mazarine blue “…was frequently met with some years ago, it has lately become one of our rarest species…”. Strange to think that even in 1893 they were looking back on the good old days.

Hi Roger,

I wonder how much butterfly populations did deteriorate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? I know that agricultural methods changed a great deal (though am not sure on the precise details), and I think it's quite likely this contributed to a loss of species/butterfly numbers across the country. The Mazarine Blue is a case in point - its former distribution maps have a very similar look to them to current maps of species such as the Wood White and Brown Hairstreak that have declined in the last fifty years through habitat loss.

There is a book on the subject of birds and agricultural change, "Birds, Scythes and Combines" by Michael Shrubb (good name!), which I really ought to get around to reading - it seems to conclude that birds were relatively little affected by agricultural change before 1950 (though some, such as the great bustard, of course were). As agricultural change has harmed farmland butterflies more than farmland birds since 1950, it seems quite likely that it harmed some butterflies in the previous couple of centuries as well.

Here's a species list of butterflies and moths around Bath dating back to 1864, from the Somerset Moth Group's website.

http://www.somersetmothgroup.org.uk/por ... +1864+List

There are some unlikely butterflies on here, like Swallowtails and what I assume are Large Heath and Chequered Skipper.

The marsh fritillary was then called the greasy fritillary, so maybe renaming it was not such a bad move…

There is another species this could usefully be done with. I expect property developers get annoyed enough to find they have a rare butterfly on the brownfield sites they intend on developing, but I can't imagine that finding out the beast in question is called Dingy Skipper helps matters...

One of the advances from release to release is the compression technology used, so the reduction in file size wouldn't surprise me at all.

Hi Pete,

Thanks for this. The images are now about 1/20 the size they used to be, which was disconcerting to say the least at first sight.

[Padfield]

The first two are certainly tit frit. From the upperside, a feature I have often noticed on this species is the fact that the markings around the submargin of the hindwing look like a row of chess pawns with floating heads.
I agree that the next is debilis - this (sub)species was particularly abundant this year at altitude. The spots rule out intermedia and cynthia has bright white right to the base of the forewing in the male.
Finally, the last one is certainly mazarine blue. The border of this species is very variable, from almost linear to a broad edge like this one.

Guy