northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Little Wood Satyr and Appalachian Brown from last June. "Satyr and Brown" aren't a law firm; they are a couple of moderately closely related butterflies collectively in the satyrini tribe . Note that in human groups I would expect a tribe to be a wider set of relations containing multiple families, but in taxonomy it's the opposite; the family is the wider group and can contain multiple tribes. So the Little Wood Satyr and Appalachian Brown are more closely related than some butterflies in their family. Although the spots on the wings and (to a lesser extent) the lines on the wings allow us to distinguish between these butterflies, I suspect you can see a resemblance. Besides the similar background color and general wing shape, just having spots and lines (even if the spots and lines differ a bit) is suggestive of a relationship. These family members could dine together, at least as adults. Both tend to avoid nectar and gravitate towards foods like sap ...

I believe this is an Appalachian Brown butterfly, though a slightly more northern species, the Eyed Brown , is also a possibility. This identification would have been more reliable if the butterfly had its wings up; they both have a prominent line seen there, but on the Eyed Brown that line is quite a bit more jagged. In this particular picture, the forewing has a couple of very small eyespots on the forewing; in an Eyed Brown all those forewing eyespots should be approximately the same size. Both these species are in the same genus ( Satyrodes ), eat basically the same food ( sedges ) as caterpillars, look similar, and have some range overlap. They're clearly related, which always makes me wonder if they ever hybridize. One of my guides says they never visit flowers for nectar, mostly drinking sap from trees and maybe drinking fluids from rotting fruit. I tend to wonder whether we've followed these butterflies around long enough and under enough diverse conditions to conclusi...