In east-central New York, Karner blue butterflies occurred in 3 rights-of-way habitat types: wild lily-of-the-valley-starflower (Maianthemum canadensis-Trientalis borealis), sweetfern-whorled yellow loosestrife ( Comptonia peregrina-Lysimachia quadrifolia), and blackberry-sheep sorrel ( Rubus spp. Īlthough Karner blue butterflies are characteristic of oak savannas ( Quercus spp.) and pine barrens ( Pinus spp.) habitats, they also occur in frequently disturbed areas such as rights-of-way, old fields, and road margins. The Karner blue butterfly appears extirpated from Iowa, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, and Ontario in Canada. Reintroductions have been initiated in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and New Hampshire. The Karner blue butterfly occurs in portions of eastern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York. The underside of both sexes is gray with a continuous band of orange crescents along the edges of both wings and with scattered black spots circled with white. The female is grayish brown, especially on the outer portions of the wings, to blue on the topside, with irregular bands of orange crescents inside the narrow black border. The topside of the male is silvery or dark blue with narrow black margins. The male and female of this small (wingspan of about one inch) butterfly are different in appearance. In 2012, after an unusually hot and dry year, the Karner blue was also extirpated in the Indiana Dunes National Park. In 2003, the Canadian Species at Risk Act listed the Karner blue as being extirpated from Canada. The Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin is home to the world's largest population of Karner blues, which benefit from its vast area of savanna and extensive lupine. Local conservation efforts, concentrating on replanting large areas of blue lupine which have been lost to development (and to fire suppression, which destroys the open, sandy habitat required by blue lupine), are having modest success at encouraging the butterfly's repopulation. There are two generations of Karner blues per year, the first in late May to mid June, the second from mid-July to mid-August. In the novel Pnin, Nabokov describes a score of Karner blues without naming them. The name originates from Karner, New York (located half-way between Albany and Schenectady) in the Albany Pine Bush, where it was first discovered. The butterfly, whose life cycle depends on the wild blue lupine flower ( Lupinus perennis), was classified as an endangered species in the United States in 1992.įirst considered a subspecies of Plebejus melissa, it was first identified and described by novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The Karner blue ( Plebejus samuelis) is an endangered species of small blue butterfly found in some Great Lakes states, small areas of New Jersey, the Capital District region of New York, and southern New Hampshire (where it is the official state butterfly) in the United States. Lycaeides melissa samuelis (Nabokov, 1944).
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