wordless Wednesday

large marble ~ 05/16/14 ~ Mal Paso Canyon

large marble

Euchloe ausonides

(Shapiro and Tenney)

Did I choose the butterflies, or did they choose me?  I guess it helps when studying butterflies that given enough patience they'll cooperate for poses on my fingers.  Am I the butterfly whisperer?  Not really.  Macro, macro, macro!  Mwahahaha...  In the hand, this large marble is totally a piece of cake to ID.  However, I still can't distinguish this butterfly in flight compared to the more ubiquitous cabbage butterfly, which has been extremely frustrating for me.  Chris is quite impressive with his flight ID skills (probably all those years spent as a birder), but it's hard to explain to another person exactly what you look for to make that ID.  I think everyone has different cues that work for them.  I know a local botanist who is color blind, and I actually think that helps him distinguish the slight color variations in plants.  We all have our gifts.

margined white ~ 02/16/14 ~ Los Padres Dam

female margined white / grey-veined white

female Pieris marginalis venosa (aka Pieris napi venosa)

 male margined white nectaring on California milkmaids

nectaring on Cardamine californica
Brassicaceae

Check out the cool yellow "shoulder" in the first pic above.  I'm so glad we finally found the macro setting on our ol' camera!  A small patch of milkmaids near the water was a very popular nectaring spot, being visited by butterflies, bee flies, and honey bees. There's not much in bloom, so it's worth noting that just down the way the patch of western coltsfoot had no visitors.

I also spotted margined whites at Stevens Creek last week, which at first sight I knew were related to cabbage whites (look at that dot on the male), but second guessed myself when I went to look for an ID.  I've totally missed the margined white ID before based on the fact I rely heavily on two quick references which omit entirely or misrepresent the early spring, first brood, bold version that I find in the area.  The summer brood is apparently almost all white.  It doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be much consensus on the Pieris "napi" complex.  I need to add notations to my field guides, so I can remember this for next time.

Sara orangetip ~ 02/16/14 ~ Los Padres Dam

Sara orangetip (more pictures here and here) nectaring on California milkmaids
Anthocharis sara (more information) nectaring on Cardamine californica

Brassicaceae

margined white ~ 04/07/13 ~ Garland Ranch

female  margined white / grey-veined white
female Pieris marginalis venosa (aka Pieris napi venosa)

edited 05/11/13 - Phew!  After a failed quick search of my go-to favorites for butterfly IDs, I cheated and asked Dr. Art Shapiro from UC Davis.  Once you know the spring generation has dark veins and the summer generation is almost all white, this is a fairly easy butterfly to distinguish.  Then, tracking down its currently correct name is a bugger. I'm using Butterflies of America in the first scientific name link above, because they seem the most anal about names. However, Art does not believe most of the CA populations are conspecific with P. marginalis and maintains the P. napi complex (mustard whites) remains uncertain.

Years ago, I was fortunate enough to have been a museum intern and later a research assistant for Dr. Sonja Teraguchi in the first establishment years of Ohio's Long-term Monitoring of Butterflies.  My fondest memories of Ohio are from butterfly outings and workshops with Sonja, various museum volunteers, and The Ohio Lepidopterists. That experience helped create and shape Nature ID. I was aware the program was partially based on the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, but until I started this blog, I didn't know Art has been doing it since 1972. As an ulterior motive for contacting Dr. Shapiro, I've been wanting to go out with him during one of his butterfly walks for the past handful of years. I've dropped the ball, repeatedly... but not this year. Now, we're tentatively set to go to his Washington site in Nevada County next Tuesday.  I'm looking forward to meeting him and learning from a butterfly master.

checkered white ~ 09/03/12 ~ Fort Ord

female checkered white (possibly western white)
female Pontia protodice (possibly Pontia occidentalis)
for more information click here and here

posted 09/18/12 - When I started Nature ID back in the spring of 2009, I simply wanted to learn more about local nature. I wasn't fully aware of the extent of challenges I would face creating a virtual collection. Sure, basing IDs solely on photographs, especially my typically crappy ones, has its limitations when experts often rely on actual collection of specimens, dissections, and scopes to distinguish species. But, I figured whatever I casually found during my hikes would be quite common and clearly represented online by people who know way more than I do. This has proven to not always be the case with some of my photographs being the first online of newly described species to the best represented of rare species to possible correction of collections from places like CalAcademy. For a new ID to me, I usually look at 3 to 20+ different sources from my own small collection of field guides, library books, and most often online, especially from reputable online ID resources I've discovered. While comparing several different sources side by side, outliers often become blatantly obvious. I hate to admit to it, but I've become something of an ID policewoman particularly on sites I know other people trust such as Wikipedia, CalPhotos, and BugGuide. In fact, I sent a correction in to a contributor to BugGuide while I was searching for this white butterfly ID.

In the embedded links in the ID under my photograph, I've linked to trusted sites Butterflies of America, Butterflies and Moths of North America (they've made vast improvements to their site in the past 3 years), and Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site. It looks to me like it's a western white based on the pattern and boldness of the markings. However for now, I'm going with a checkered white ID, because westerns have never been reported for Monterey County. As biologist and fellow blogger biobabbler has repeatedly cautioned me, I should not always rely on what other people have reported. I've sent e-mails to Paul Opler, Jim Brock, and Art Shapiro for their expert guidance. I've already heard back from Paul and Jim and will ask if I can quote them in this blog post. I have a feeling Art will have a more definitive answer for me. I'll update this post when I know more.

Btw, the Pontia I show is nectaring on telegraph weed (Heterotheca grandiflora), one of the few flowers I found blooming profusely at Fort Ord on this date.

ps 09/22/12 - Phew!  I've been in several e-mail correspondences regarding this post.  Mike Hoffman at BugGuide was surprisingly quick in getting the ID corrected, even though he's not an editor with access to move IDs.  The three experts I contacted each have authored books on butterflies (linked in their names below) and basically said the two Pontia spp. are difficult to tell apart.  Paul Opler, like me, thought it looks more like P. occidentalis.  Jim Brock suggested I contact Art who is more familiar with butterflies in this region.

Art Shapiro ended up being a gold mine with more detail and PDFs of his scientific papers than I could fully wrap my head around (still trying to figure out how to post PDFs on my blog).  His area of extraordinary familiarity from the greater Sacramento area to the Sierras spans an impressive 40 years.  With his permission, here's what Art said, "I'm sure it's protodice. It's a very fresh, crisply-marked one, but it's still a female protodice. I've gotten nearly identical ones here and in Riverside County--and on the East Coast! Back in the 70s it was sometimes incredibly common in the Salinas Valley and nearby, and it generally peaks regionally in September. Occidentalis has never been reported reliably in the Coast Range south of the Bay, except for the two Doudoroff early-spring specimens from the Santa Cruz Mts. in the 1940s cited on p.106 of my book. (I wanted to ask him if he remembered anything about them, but he had died just a few weeks before I came upon the specimens at Berkeley!)"  M. Doudoroff actually collected these specimens in 1930, which are now housed at University of California, Berkeley's Essig Museum of Entomology and have not been catalogued yet.  Art goes on to state, "Occidentalis has indeed been expanding its range--eastward across Canada and along the US-Canada border, nowhere near here. It does show up very rarely on the floor of the Sacramento Valley (see attachments) in September-October. We don't really understand this. Monterey would be rather an incredible stretch. Nothing is impossible, of course. A P. beckeri was once caught (really) in Colusa County. I suspect the pupa came in on a camper or other vehicle..."  After some questioning on my part and an admission that I was hoping I had found a new Monterey Co. record for P. occidentalis, Art replied, "These two cause lots of confusion, and it doesn't help that where they are sympatric 1-2% may be hybrids. (Here is another old paper about their genetics. It goes back to the Miocene, before the polymerase chain reaction triggered the sequencing revolution. We probably should look at these two genomically as part of our overall hybridization research program. We're doing sulphurs right now.) The 'winter' phenotypes of both are VERY much darker beneath than the 'summer' ones and yes, it is easy to get confused with only singletons or a few specimens, rather than good series. In the 'recurrent enigma' paper, the occis are at the upper left in each group. No, that first record was not a hoax, but I had been cautioned by colleagues to refer to the possibility if only to discount it.  I have raised literally 1000s of these things in the course of research. I don't claim infallibility--only that I'm pretty good with them. Never take 'expert' stuff on faith. I've often been wrong, usually on Speyeria but hardly ever on Pontia or on skippers. But 'hardly ever' does not equal 'never.'"  Art finishes, "Butterfly people can be annoying in the same way as birders. If you can tell your Empidonax flycatchers you are up in the stratosphere with the anabolic-steroid users. Hang in there! Don't be intimidated by 'expertise.' As we age, it metamorphoses into senility."  Gotta love Art!  If anyone would like PDFs of his papers, feel free to contact me and I can forward them to you.

cabbage white ~ 09/26/11 ~ at home

cabbage white

Pieris rapae

It doesn't look very white, does it? Despite the yellow on the underside of the hindwings, it does appear very white in flight. I mainly wanted to show that this butterfly successfully emerged mid-morning. For a while there the chrysalis was so dark for several days that I was beginning to think it had died. The clear empty pupal casing can be seen still attached to the leaf. I had provided the stick so it could have something to climb onto while it pumped up its wings. I initially believed it to be a female, because I could barely make out two black spots from what I thought was showing through the hindwing from its forewing. Generally on cabbage butterflies, viewing the forewings from the top side and not counting the black wing tips, females have two spots and males have one spot on each forewing. However, I noticed Butterflies of America (linked in the common name above) has examples of spread specimens showing varying number of spots depending on whether it's the dorsal or ventral view of all the wings. I guess I've never really looked that closely before. I had hoped to get a picture of my cabbage white outside of the container and with its wings spread open, but by the afternoon it flew away before I could even turn on the camera. Jeffrey Glassberg notes, "Although many people disparage this species, because it is so common and not native, close observation reveals it to be one of the most graceful inhabitants of the air." I agree. Art Shapiro provides a nice summary of this common butterfly.

cabbage white ~ 09/22/11 ~ at home

chrysalis of cabbage white
Pieris rapae

I've viewed so many blog posts of monarch butterfly chrysalises in the past month that I thought I'd show something different and perhaps just as common, the European cabbage butterfly, simply aka cabbage white. Thanks to growing new plants on my balcony this year, like nasturtiums and tomatoes, I've been visited by a whole host of typical garden "pests." This cabbage white was feeding on my nasturtiums, and I collected it as the caterpillar started wandering, a behavior I've noticed several Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) do before they pupate. Does anyone know why they wander?

I think chrysalis structures are quite impressive regardless of the species of butterfly. The white fuzzy clump seen in the first pic above, towards the tail-end of the pupa, is the cast caterpillar exoskeleton. I can't explain why it's fuzzy and white considering the larva was a smooth bright green. The part that is away from the leaf is the ventral surface (your belly side if we were to compare to human anatomy) of what will become the adult butterfly. By the time I got around to taking pictures, this chrysalis was developed enough that I could clearly recognize the proboscis, eyes, and wings. If you click to enlarge the second picture, you can see the silken lasso around the midsection of the chrysalis attaching it to the leaf, kinda like how I've seen many swallowtail butterflies attach themselves while pupating. This chrysalis almost reminds me of a miniature hummingbird in profile.

Sara orangetip ~ 03/04/11 ~ Pinnacles

Sara orangetip
Anthocharis sara

I happily and readily admit these are not the best photos. I have to laugh at how difficult it is to get a decent picture of a butterfly that rarely seems to rest or nectar on blooming plants. Shown in the first picture are milkmaids. I have a couple pics of just the tip of my shoe and initially wondered why before I remembered I was trying to capture the Sara orangetip on "film." I'm posting this as an ID, because during last year's visit to Pinnacles on May 6, 2010 I very much wanted to get a picture of an orangetip and failed spectacularly. One thing to note, I find a March through May flight period to be rather lengthy and wonder if there are two distinct broods in this area.