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LEPIDOPTERA

Euphydryas ichnea (Boisduval, [1833])
Euphydryas ichnea (Boisduval, [1833])

• TYPE LOCALITY. «Le nord de la Lapponie et de la Siberie» [?Siberia].

• SYNONYM. intermedia (Menetries, 1859).

• RANGE. From the Urals to Sakhalin; the Alps, Mongolia, NE. China, Korea.

• DISTRIBUTION AND VARIATION. Most of the distribution area (S. Siberia, Transbaikalia, Far East, Amur and Ussuri regions) supports the nominotypical subspecies. In the Sayan Mts., the ssp. mongolica (Staudinger, 1892) (TL: «[Kentei-Gebirge]») is known to occur, and from the Altais the ssp. altaiana (Wnukowsky, 1929) (= altaica Seitz, [1909], nom. praeoccup.). The ssp. konumensis (Matsumura, 1927) has been described from Sakhalin. An isolated population from the Maritime Alps has been described as the ssp. wolfensbergeri (Frey, 1880). It is noteworthy that all these taxa are very close to the nominotypical subspecies.

• TAXONOMIC NOTES. Higgins (1950) rejected the name ichnea because the original description was said to be too poor, the figure depicted the female not of ichnea but of cynthia, and Lapland was indicated as the type locality. However, this opinion is false, even the original description appeas rather full, as distinctions from cynthia were mentioned. In addition, the illustrated female form with points on the band on the UPH does occur in this species, rarely though. Also, Siberia was correctly mentioned as the terra typica, since this butterfly is known to live there.

• HABITATS AND BIOLOGY. Outskirts of mixed forest, river valleys, subalpine thin forest up to 2,200 m a.s.l. Flight period: June to July. In the Ussuri region, egg-laying on Lonicera maackii, mature larvae collected from the same plant (Kurentzov, 1970: Dantchenko & Nikolaevsky, in press).

• SIMILAR SPECIES. Euphydryas maturna: UPS with strongly contrasting bands of whitish and bright orange-red; small black pupils absent from an orange submarginal fascia of HW.

 

Photo and text: Guide to the BUTTERFLIES OF RUSSIA and adjacent territories Volume 2. PENSOFT, Sofia - Moscow. 2000