www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Whilst browsing I discovered Assman's is known from Northern Italy. Whilst there last year I photo'd lots of "athalia".... could this one qualify for britomartis?
sorry, I have no upperside shots... I expect to be thinking wishfully yet again. Thanks for any opinions offered!!

Keep in mind these recent findings...
http://nl.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1154

Only last week I ordered the genus Melitaea (Oorschot and Coutsis) to help me resolve precisely these kinds of question, as it is clear received wisdom on separating certain species is not always very helpful. Then I left for the UK, so it's probably waiting for me as I write. That's an interesting paper, Pieter, even if its conclusions don't surprise me - thank you.

For what it's worth, the marginal line of the hindwing does seem to be consistently dark in britomartis - I've studied quite a lot of specimens in the past. It can sometimes be dark in athalia but is very rarely light in britomartis. So on the strength of this, I would suggest your butterfly is athalia, Paul.

As I've often noted, aurelia looks quite different from athalia in flight. This is something you can't appreciate by studying wings or genitalia. I wonder if britomartis (which I've never seen in the flesh) is similarly distinctive.

Guy

Fascinating article and observations... I am to deduce that mine was a stupid question
As a non scientist I am still trying to get my head round different species which are morphologically indistinguishable.... seems such a shame!!! Then I remember these are all relatively false labels by human beagles trying to catalogue nature. It's all very hard!!!
Thank you both.

http://nl.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1154

Excellent coffee-time read

Jack

http://nl.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=1154

Excellent coffee-time read

Brilliant link - many thanks, Jack.

What hope for mere mortals ??

Tony M.

From Jack's link (a mini masterpiece of scientific investigation imho), it would seem that athalia, britomaris and aurelia are pretty well impossible to accurately separate as adults. Are the early stages of these insects sufficiently different to allow species distinction before maturity? Does anyone know of any research in this area? Guy mentioned 'jizz'. I saw what I assumed to be aurelia in the Dolomites this year. Although it declined to be photographed, it looked about half the size of the British athalia, and had a very unusual jerky flight, interspersed with smooth glides of a metre or so. I hope I'm not alone in finding this subject compelling , and would be grateful for any input.

Tony M.

The paper establishes the impossibility of determining a single individual with confidence but nevertheless confirms certain statistical trends. That is significant, as the butterflies are not singletons. If you find one aurelia, for example, there will be others - this is a meadow butterfly, found in relatively sedentary colonies. If you examine a number of individuals closely you are likely to gain a much higher degree of confidence. Also, there are asymmetries in the overlaps. For example, athalia commonly shows a contrasting marginal line, making this feature useless for confirming aurelia or britomartis. But britomartis in particular very rarely shows a line the same colour as the lunules. So this character is more useful for eliminating britomartis, especially if you check it on several individuals.

The book I ordered before leaving for the UK is http://www.libreriadellanatura.com/the- ... -1807.html (it can be bought from many bookshops, but that is the cheapest for me). I'll let you know if it has any useful insights. My Swiss guide, also in Switzerland, has early stage photos of all species, which I will take a look at when I return.

Aurelia, where I see it at least (confirmed by violence, not committed by me), has a much less rapid, gliding flight than athalia. It appears dark and rather fluttery on the wing.

Finally, in the interests of accuracy, I'm sure Jack won't mind my pointing out he copied the link from a little higher up this same page, in Pieter's post!

Guy

Thanks for the reference, Guy

I have no experience with M. britomartis but I have experience with M. athalia and a little with M. aurelia, especially in Belgium where the first one is locally common in the centre and south of the country (but lacking in the extreme south) and the latter is rare with only a few colonies in the extreme south of the country (one of my pics of a Belgian aurelia). And my experience is the same as from Guy.

For the juvenile stages, there are a few website with good to great footage of juvenile stages of European butterflies, for example:
http://pyrgus.de/Melitaea_athalia_en.html
http://lepiforum.de/lepiwiki.pl?Fotoueb ... ini_Raupen

I haven't ordered the book of Coutsis and Van Oorschot yet because it is a bit pricey but I had already a glimpse in the book and there are some expected and less expected taxonomical adaptations, f.e. the expected split of M. athalia in a northern and southwestern species (Coutsis and Van Oorschot are using nevadensis for this taxon instead of celadussa) and maybe a less expected split of M. trivia in 3 species. If I'm correct Coutsis and Van Oorschot made their decisions mainly on differences in the genital structures but genetic data are still largely lacking in the book. But well, if I'm not mistaking, both authors are 81 years old (so they were probably already watching butterflies before Watson et al described the structure of DNA) and made all the drawings of the genital structures themselves and as genetic surveys on European butterflies are still ongoing it seems logic they didn't want to wait for yet some more articles to be published. You can see some illustrative pages of the book on this folder.