47260_male_Hautes-Alpes_12Jul20

47257_male_Hautes-Alpes_12Jul20

Erebia scipio is a highly elusive and localised species. Its distribution is limited to the southern French Alpes and a small section of the Alpes-Maritimes across the border in Italy. I have only seen this species at one location, in July 2020 (in line with pandemic restrictions), and only one specimen, and again in 2021. I was in a known exact location (thanks to my French friend PD for the information) but I have some serious reservations about the 2020 sighting, outlined below.

It would appear that it has disappeared from a number of its former haunts. An English lepidopterist with an excellent track record of finding rare species recently spent a number of days in the accepted scipio stronghold (to use the word in its loosest sense) in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence without success.

The reason I believe 47260 is (or could be) scipio is that I spent a minute or two studying this individual at a distance through my Papilio binoculars when it had its wings closed and the unh appeared entirely black with no mottling that would indicate the only other candidate, Marbled Ringlet (E. montana). However, repeating a mistake I have made too frequently, I spent too much time looking and failed to get a photograph of the underside. By the time I got the camera into action, all I could get were these two images, albeit reasonably clear as distance shots.

So what are/were the reasons for my doubts?

1. I would expect the uph red post-discal band to be rather wider for scipio.

2. I would expect the uph ocelli to be slightly larger for scipio.

3. I would expect the ocelli to be better aligned and not slightly offset for scipio. This is a major reservation.

4. It is said that scipio is "usually without hindwing ocelli". These are very small ocelli and located at the very outer edge of the uph post-discal band. For montana, I would expect the ocelli to be larger and more centrally located within the band, a pointer away from montana. The recently-published Atlas by CEN-PACA shows only an image of the underside hindwing. This is not very clear but does appear to show a unh reddish band with two small ocelli at the edge of the band.

However, an internet search (not that there any many useful images available anywhere) shows images of smaller ocelli, ocelli not quite aligned, and hindwing vestigial ocelli.

Despite scouring this location with binoculars for another two hours, I did not see another. The date would have been a the start of the flight period, so this fresh male may have been the first to emerge. The only other Erebia at this location were Piedmont Ringlet (E. meolans) - image 47270 on that page - and False Mnestra Ringlet (E. aethiopella), ubiquitous in this region.

I made another trip to the same location in 2021 and saw 48602, again the only one I saw there, but unquestionably scipio, comments as below. The similarity to 47260 perhaps suggests that 47260 is, in fact, scipio. No more than suggests.

ref

sex

observations

alt. m

47257

M

a male. See comment above. 47260 is the same butterfly. 2021 update: the upf red post-discal band almost exactly matches 48602 (shown to be scipio beyond, I think, any doubt), so 47257 is almost certainly scipio as a coincidence would be far too unlikely.

Also, studying images of montana shows that the upf red post-discal band is "waisted" i.e. constricted in the middle, in each space between the veins, at least to some degree. 47257 does not show this to any extent, a further strong indication that 47257 is not montana.

In addition, the montana uph red post-discal band shows a similar degree of "waisting" most apparent in that the external edge is always ("always" is a risky word to use in terms of butterfly markings) concave, sometimes to a very marked degree. I feel that the evidence is sufficiently conclusive to show that 47257 is scipio.

Whenever, a rare species is involved, or a species "you want it to be", the identification criteria become more stringent and the need for objectivity is greater. Not always easy, though.

2290

47260

M

a male. See comment above. 47257 is the same butterfly.

2290