Who are you?

I thought for this post you could listen to some music while you’re reading.

My favorite place to take a walk is in the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge.

Throughout the Refuge are various plaques detailing some of the wildlife that make the Refuge home. One of those plaques is about the Quino Checkerspot butterfly.

The Quino Checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas editha quino) is an endangered butterfly native to California and Mexico. It is a subspecies of the common Edith’s Checkerspot (Euphydryas editha) butterfly and only the second butterfly subspecies to be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The poor Quino Checkerspot has had to change names several times since first being discovered and described in 1863 as Melitaea quino. In 1929 it was reduced to a subspecies of Euphydryas chalcedona. Then, in 1998, the 1863 description was used to reclassify it as Euphydryas editha instead of Euphydryas chalcedona. It has also been known as Euphydryas editha wrighti, a junior synonym for Euphydryas editha quino. A junior synonym is simply a later name for the same species. In today’s world of zoological nomenclature, the earliest correct name is the name that gets used, so all later names are moot except in the rarest of circumstances.

I’ve been agonizing over a picture that I got yesterday of two checkerspot butterflies:

I’m hoping they are Quino Checkerspot butterflies, and I have found some pictures on the Internet that are very similar to them. Unfortunately, I’m quite aware that pictures on the Internet often are misidentified so all other people do is continue the misidentification.

One source says the Quino Checkerspot is often misidentified by amateur butterfly searchers (that’s me!) as Chalcedon Checkerspot, Variable Checkerspot, Gabb’s Checkerspot, Wright’s Checkerspot, Bay Checkerspot, and Edith’s Checkerspot. I have probably looked at more than a thousand pictures of all these butterflies and I keep coming back to the Quino Checkerspot. So I’m sticking with that until a butterfly specialist tells me otherwise.

Currently, the Quino Checkerspot is found only in western Riverside County, southern San Diego County (where I was), and northern Baja California, Mexico. Ninety-five percent of their historic range has been lost to urban sprawl.

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