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The insect collections of museums contain drawers of unidentified specimens which await the attention of specialists. This month a new species of butterfly, Splendeuptychia ackeryi (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), will be published in Zootaxa after being discovered by a curator from The Natural History Museum, Blanca Huertas.

Huertas collected S. ackeryi during an expedition to Columbia, but it wasn’t until the unidentified butterfly was compared with a museum specimens that entomologist realised it was the same as a 90 year old unidentified museum specimen. One of the distinguishing features of S. ackeryi which helped with the identification were its extremely hairly mouthparts.

I first read about this in a ScienceDaily article.

You can view some photographs on the NHM news page.

As my home county and the county I currently reside in, Essex and its flora and fauna are of particular interest to me. With some of the worrying developments along the Thames (notably the West Thurrock Marshes) it was good to read some positive news for the Grizzled Skipper, Pyrgus malvae (Wisbey, 2008: pg.5) and the Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia (Grimshaw, 2008: pg.7) in the Winter issue of Essex Wildlife.

Langdon nature reserve has managed their meadows with periodic sheep and cattle grazing, preventing growth of young trees and the more rapidly growing plants and grasses, allowing smaller plants survive. This meadow management has allowed the populations of P. malvae to increase.

Little Haven nature reserve has a growing colony of M. athalia along a managed area of coppiced trees under power lines which also has lots of Common Cow-wheat, Melampyrum pratense, one of the main foodplants for the species. As this is a UK BAP priority species with decreasing distribution and populations, this is fantastic news.

Reference:
Wisbey, J. (2008) Grizzled Skippers at Langdon, Essex Wildlife, November 2008, No. 77.
Grimshaw, S. (2008) Heath Fritillary now well established at Little Haven nature reserve, Essex Wildlife, November 2008, No. 77.