Aricia icarioides | |
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Fender's blue butterfly | |
Fender's blue butterfly, underside | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Insecta |
Order: | Lepidoptera |
Family: | Lycaenidae |
Genus: | Aricia |
Species: | A. icarioides |
Binomial name | |
Aricia icarioides (Boisduval, 1852) |
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Subspecies | |
See text |
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Synonyms | |
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See text
Aricia icarioides, or Boisduval's blue, is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family found in North America.
Aricia icarioides has been classified in at least four different genera since it was named by Jean Baptiste Boisduval in 1852. It started out in Lycaena, was transferred to Icaricia by Nabokov (Hodges et al., 1983), moved to Aricia by Bálint and Johnson (1997), merged with some other genera in the supergenus Plebejus by Gorbunov (2001), which was accepted by Opler & Warren (2003), however, Lamas (2004) among others use Aricia. Synonymy, subgenera, and subspecies vary considerably depending on the author.
Their range extends throughout the western US and Canada from southern Saskatchewan to British Columbia.
Larvae feed on species of lupines (Lupinus).
Wingspan: 21 to 32 mm.