Mountain Ringlet (erebia epiphron)
2008 photos highlighted green. Click on any photo to go to an enlarged picture, or simply scroll down the page.
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| 8317_female_Valais, Switzerland_22Jul07 | 05_23-23_male?_Ariege_23Jul05 |
Epiphron has a number of widely separated populations across Europe, each with a clearly different form. Lafranchis says it is widespread and abundant in France in the Alps and Pyrenees, but this has not been my experience, as I have seen it only rarely.
8317: a female of the southern Alpine form aetheria. The clues to it being female are the wide upf post-discal band, the minute blind ocelli in s2-5, and the slightly angled hindwing at s3. The slight but just-visible body shape suggests female. Altitude 2200m.
05_23-23: this is, I believe, the eastern Pyrenean form fauveaui with the red upf post-discal band reduced, especially in s3, and larger (blind) ocelli than the other forms. The upf ocellus in s3 seems smaller and very isolated, more so than I would have expected from the T&L illustration of fauveaui, but this may just be normal variation. It did look passingly like a False Dewy Ringlet (E. sthennyo) (given that I had never seen either epiphron or sthennyo before this) although the post-discal red upf band is extending into s6 and the ocelli don’t look close enough to the margins for sthennyo. Altitude 1600m.
8317_female_Valais, Switzerland_22Jul07
