Bleh, forgot to follow up on the matter of
Styx infernalis ...
This is a white butterfly with deep brown or black wing veins, and probably would not attract much attention from anyone from the UK.
However, this butterfly caused headaches for taxonomists for over a century.
The reason for this?
When butterflies are dissected, in professional scientific work, it becomes pretty obvious in a short period of time, where your specimen will fit in the Lepidoptera family tree.
Skippers (Family Hesperiidae), for example, pretty much stand out from all the other Families very quickly indeed, and likewise, it's pretty easy to allocate a specimen to the Family Papilionidae (Swallowtails etc.), because these tend to be pretty unmistakable as well.
Two Families that sometimes require a little more work are the Lycaenidae (Blues, Coppers, Hairstreaks and relations), and the Riodinidae (Metalmarks). Separating them occasionally requires extra attention to detail, but usually, this isn't a big problem, because each Family has its own set of anatomical idiosyncrasies, that once found, make the placement of any newly discovered species more time consuming than actually difficult. At least, once you've gained the requisite experience and know what to look for.
Then along came
Styx infernalis . Which threw a whole bag of spanners into the process.
This is because this otherwise unassuming little butterfly, when first examined, appeared to be a "parts bin" special, with anatomical features taken from no less than four different Families. Or so it seemed, even when microscopes were brought into play.
As a consequence, this butterfly has been moved around the Lepidoptera family tree to a hilarious extent. Some taxonomists placed it in the Lycaenidae, others in the Danaidae, yet others in the Riodinidae, and at least one taxonomist decided that it was such an anatomical outlier that it deserved its own Family, the Stygidae.
Only with the advent of DNA sequencing, was the mystery finally resolved, and the butterfly finally assigned to the Riodinidae, where it stands out as being unique among the Metalmarks. Though it's perhaps not surprising that it's South American, as South America is the true home of this Family.
We have but one species in Europe, about 15 to 20 in Asia, about another 15 or so in Australia, and a respectable 100 or so in North America. Go to Central and South America, however, and there's nearly
two thousand species to choose from. Peru alone has something like 900 of them. Chances are that Costa Rica has at least 250 species to choose from when Pat steps off the plane and heads for the nearest decent sized patch of rainforest.
In addition, many of the Metalmarks live up to their name, being decorated with iridescent metallic spangles in a range of hues, with blue or red being popular colour choices. Some of the more interesting ones are solid metallic blue with eye spots, and if there are any
Ancyluris or
Rhetus species present, these are a blast, though I'm more used to hearing of these being found in Amazonian Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.
Meanwhile, since Costa Rica has come up as a topic, look out for the native Orthoptera of that locality ... I guarantee you'll use up at least half a gigabyte of camera storage on them when you discover how utterly bizarre some of them are ...