Glanville fritillary
| Melitaea cinxia | |
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| Upperside | |
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| Underside | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Nymphalidae |
| Genus: | Melitaea |
| Species: | M. cinxia |
| Binomial name | |
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Melitaea cinxia (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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| Synonyms | |
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The Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) is a butterfly of the Nymphalidae family.
The Glanville fritillary is named for Lady Eleanor Glanville, an eccentric 17th- and 18th-century English butterfly enthusiast – a very unusual occupation for a woman at that time. She was the first to capture British specimens in Lincolnshire during the 1690s. A contemporary wrote:
This fly took its name from the ingenious Lady Glanvil, whose memory had like to have suffered for her curiosity. Some relations that was disappointed by her Will, attempted to let it aside by Acts of Lunacy, for they suggested that none but those who were deprived of their senses, would go in Pursuit of butterflies.
Subspecies include:
The Glanville fritillary is present throughout Europe (except much of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and southern Spain), the Near East and temperate Asia. A subspecies inhabits North Africa. This species inhabits open grassland at an elevation of 0–2,000 metres (0–6,562 ft) above sea level. Severe population declines are reported in many European countries.
In the UK the Glanville fritillary occurs only on soft undercliff and chine grassland and the slopes above where its main larval food plant Plantago lanceolata occurs in abundance on sheltered, south facing slopes. The Glanville fritillary is a highly restricted species in the UK being confined to the south coast of the Isle of Wight. It also occurs in the Channel Islands and since 1990 there has been a mainland site on the Hampshire coast, possibly an introduction. There are small introduced populations on the Somerset coast and two in Surrey one near Wrecclesham, and a nature reserve in Addington, London Croydon.
Historic UK records suggest a distribution which went as far north as Lincolnshire. However, by the middle of the 19th century the Glanville fritillary was known only from the Isle of Wight and the coast of Kent between Folkestone and Sandwich. It became extinct in Kent by the mid-1860s.
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Wikipedia