Checklists & Life Histories

It is with great satisfaction that we truly "got it together" and now published the first (species level) comprehensive Checklist of the Lepidoptera of Utah. For a number of years, all three of us have been, slowly or otherwise, accumulating data for our respective lists. It was amazing to see just how willingly, carefully, and expeditiously all of us responded to cooperate in this joint effort. The formal invitation to do so is but a very few weeks old. As editor, I want to highly commend Ray E. Stanford and Joel M. Johnson for their very carefully prepared work, and the extremely rapid submission of their compilation efforts. It is they who made this cooperative effort a success.

The last state checklist of Utah butterfly species was published in UTn 1988 8 3:34-35. That 1988 list is now changed as follows: Three deletions have been made (all in the Nymphalidae), four common names have been modified, three new species have been added, and eleven changes in spelling of scientific species names have been made, mostly to comply with Article 31(b) of the Code of Zoological Nomenclature which states that species-group names must agree in gender with the generic names with which they are at any time combined.

Basilarchia lorquini has been deleted because its original inclusion was not valid. I believed that my screening system was sufficiently strong to prevent this type of error, but in this particular case, unfortunately, it was not.

Anartia jatrophe was deleted because although the Ut Co capture data was valid, its occurrence in Utah was not judged to be fully natural.

The taxon most rhopalocerists refer to as Lycaena dorcas florus (alberta enigma copper) flies in the higher mountains of UT. 

Checklist of Utah Butterflies

Checklist of Utah Skippers

All images of Limenitis weidemeyeri on the ULS Info Bar courtesy Jay Cossey

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