Costa Rica, December 2018

[petesmith]

Many thanks Charles and Bugboy for posting those links, which should indeed be of help, but ironically they have muddied the waters further to some extent!

Charles, your link to Martin Reid's site has the White-tipped Metalmark listed as Melanis cephise and the White-rayed Metalmark as Melanis acroleuca.

But on bugboy's iNaturalist links, the names are reversed, with White-tipped Metalmark as Melanis acroleuca and the White-rayed Metalmark as Melanis cephise

Glassberg concurs with the taxonomy on iNaturalist, with White-tipped as acroleuca and White-rayed as cephise, but take a look at Will Carter's webpage below and it is now the White-tipped Pixie that is given the specific name of cephise!
http://www.neotropicalbutterflies.com/S ... phise.html

Confused yet???

The Latin "acroleuca" is certainly a very accurate translation for "white-tipped", and further investigations show that the majority of web sources do indeed have the White-tipped as acroleuca, so I am happy with that, and "metalmark" and "pixie" can remain interchangeable.

In terms of distribution, my example is almost certainly the White-rayed Metalmark or Pixie, and I shall rename it as such with 95% confidence.
Phew! Glad I got that almost sorted. I love these debates...

Or alternatively, I might just throw the whole thing back to my wife, who first spotted this individual at nectar. Her comment this morning: "Does it really matter? It is just a beautiful butterfly!"

[bugboy]

Well I think if that proves anything, it's that you shouldn't believe everything google tells you

[petesmith]

Indeed bugboy! Both fools and wise men would be well advised to tread lightly during their meanderings upon the internet...