Hipparchia azorina (Strecker, 1899)
Type locality: Azores
Range: Azores - Pico, Sao Jorge, Faial, Terceira
Habitat: Its natural habitats are sheltered grassy slopes - Pico 600 - 2,000mtrs; Sao Jorge 480 - 720mtrs; Faial 700 - 1,000mtrs; Terceira 1,000mtrs
Flight Period: June to October
Synonyms:
ssp. azorina (Strecker, 1899) – Faial, = barbara (Bivar de
Sousa, 1985) - Terceira = borgesi Tennent & Bivar de Soussa (2003) - Terceira
= ohshimai (Esaki, 1936) - Faial = picoensis (Oehmig, 1983) - Pico; = jorgensis (Le Cerf, 1935) - Sao Jorge.
Note: Russell, Peter {a}; Jutzeler, David; Volpe, Guido. The use of the pre-imaginal stages of the Macaronesian Hipparchia species in the clarification of the numbers and ranks of the taxa present in Madeira and the Azores archipelago (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Satyrinae) Part 2.1: The populations of the central Azores islands of Terceira, Sao Jorge and Pico. Linneana Belgica 20(1), March 2005: 3-14.
In Part I of this study the early stages, genitalia and imagines of the Hipparchia species occupying Madeira, Sao Miguel and Faial were compared; in Part 2 an analysis of the taxa living on the central Azores islands is presented. Females were collected for ovipositing from Pico (picoensis), two locations on Sao Jorge (jorgense) and the two on Terceira occupied by borgesi and barbara; the resulting ova were reared to adulthood. The main objectives were to establish whether there were any differences between both the two populations occupying Sao Jorge and the two resident on Terceira, of which the latter have been classified as subspecies of different species, i.e. borgesi of H. miguelensis and barbara of H. azorina. Secondly, all these populations were compared with those from Faial (azorina s.s.) and Sao Miguel (miguelensis). The following characters were studied in detail: the attachment of the ova, its size and color, the hues and hairyness of the larvae, the adult wing morphology and the genitalia of both sexes. Based on these criteria, all the taxa occupying the central islands proved to be very similar to each other but differed markedly from miguelensis. Hence it was concluded that all the populations of the central islands should be regarded as a single species, H. azorina, and that the two Terceira populations did not warrant specific separation.
ssp. azorina - Faial
ssp. azorina - Pico
ssp. azorina - Sao Jorge
ssp. azorina - Terceira
ssp. azorina - Faial
ssp. azorina - Pico
ssp. azorina - Sao Jorge
ssp. azorina - Terceira