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A: Female of Freyeria trochylus feeding on Heliotropium hirsutissimum, Rodos, 13 Aug 2019; B: Andrachne telephioides, the larval hostplant of F. trochylus in Rodos, Rodos, 24 Sep 2019; C: Natural habitat occupied by F. trochylus butterflies, Lindos, 21 Aug 2019; D: Egg of F. trochylus on a fresh leaf of A. telephioides, Pefki, 27 Oct 2019; E, F: Larvae of F. trochylus in association with ant species, Rodos, 22 Oct 2019.
Source publication
This study is focused on the presence of Freyeria trochylus (Freyer, 1844) and Zizeeria karsandra (Moore, 1865) on Rodos Island, Greece. F. trochylus was first found there by Turati and Fiori in 1923 and Z. karsandra by Bender in 1958. The distributional range of both species in Europe including the Mediterranean and their habitat and ecology, incl...
Similar publications
In this paper, we have documented the two new records of butterflies from the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, namely One-spot Grass Yellow Eurema andersonii Moore, 1886 and Common Shot Silverline Spindasis ictis Hewitson, 1865. Both the species were reported from Pawalgarh Conservation Reserve, Ramnagar of Nainital district, Uttarakhand, India. These...
Citations
... Lafranchis et al. 2007;Obregón-Romero and Gil-T. 2011;Obregón et al. 2015;Galanos 2020) have contributed to levelling out that bias and brought forward a much broader coverage of ant visitors at European lycaenid caterpillars. ...
Based on a global compilation of data on ant associates of 523 Lycaenidae species, a synthesis is attempted as to which ants participate in these interactions. Ants from 63 genera have thus far been observed as visitors of facultative myrmecophiles or as hosts of obligate myrmecophiles among the Lycaenidae. Over 98% of records come from nectarivorous and trophobiotic ants in just three subfamilies, viz. Formicinae, Myrmicinae and Dolichoderinae, with the genera Crematogaster and Camponotus occupying the top ranks. Accumulation analysis suggests that rather few ant genera remain to be added to the list of associates. The representation of ant genera as attendants of lycaenid immatures is related to their global species richness, but with some notable exceptions. Ants that form ecologically dominant, large, long-lived colonies are over-represented as hosts of obligate myrmecophiles. The taxonomic diversity of lycaenid-ant associations is highest in the Oriental and Australian region, and lowest in the Neotropical and Afrotropical region. Among tropical African lycaenids, this is due to two butterfly lineages (genus Lepidochrysops and subfamily Aphnaeinae) that have massively radiated in the Neogene, but mostly maintaining their general affiliations with either Camponotus or Crematogaster ants, respectively. Many tropical and subtropical lycaenids nowadays form associations also with invasive alien tramp ants, giving rise to novel mutualistic interactions.
Successful conservation of butterflies is dependent on knowing which larval foodplants they use. However, many published lists of larval foodplants have been copied from previous lists, which in turn have been copied from previous lists. Consequently, errors have crept in, and many plant names have long been superseded. This can result in duplicates in the list, with the same plant being given two different names. Most plant lists do not include the authority, which can make it difficult or impossible to identify which plant is being referred to. For the first time, a list of the current accepted plant names utilised by 471 European butterfly larvae is presented, with references. Where possible, errors in previous lists have been removed. The list of larval foodplants doubled from previous published lists. This has resulted in a list of 1506 different plant species in 72 different families. 86 plant records are only known at the generic level. Larval foodplants of 25 butterfly species are currently unknown. Whilst most plant families are utilised by less than six butterfly species, a few plant families are particularly favoured, with the Poaceae and Fabaceae being the most popular. Similarly, most plant species are only utilised by a few butterfly species, but Festuca ovina and Festuca rubra are favoured by a large number of butterfly species. 20% of European butterfly larvae are monophagous, 50% are oligophagous, and 30% are polyphagous, with Celastrina argiolus able to use plants in 19 different families.
