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1969
Journal of the Lepidopterists Society
265
NEW DISTRIBUTIONAL DATA ON THREE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES BUTTERFLIES
Arthur M. Shapiro
Dept. of Entomology and Limnology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Newly discovered but presumably relict localities are reported in New York and Pennsylvania for Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov (Lycaeni-dae), Colias interior Scudder (Pieridae), and Poanes massasoit (Scudder) (Hesperiidae). Each connects parts of the range previously considered disjunct. The distributions of the three species are discussed.
Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov
The "Karner blue" is reputed to be the most local butterfly in the northeastern United States. Virtually all museum specimens come from either the famous colony in Albany County, New York, or the south end of Lake Michigan. Its distribution in the intervening area is poorly known: the only New York record west of the Adirondacks and Catskills is Clayton, Jefferson Co., on the banks of the St. Lawrence (Forbes, 1928).
On July 16, 1968 the author, L. L. Pechuman, and John Burton collected a series of L. m. samuelis in a small area on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation in Genesee County, western New York. Great numbers of fresh individuals were flying among roadside lupines (Lupinus perennis), the foodplant, and in adjacent brush land overgrown with small oaks and sumac. The species was still abundant on August 1, and a single female, still in good condition, was taken by Dr. Pechuman on August 23.
Genesee County L. melissa are slightly smaller than most from Albany County. The tendency for the postmedian black spot in cell Cui of the forewing underside to be produced basad, which is present to some degree in other populations, is well developed in our series in both sexes.
Lucien Harris, Jr. informs me in litt. that southern Appalachian records of this species cannot be substantiated. Clark (1938) recorded it from Blantyre, Transylvania County, North Carolina on the basis of mislabeled material. Harris (1950) recorded it from Fulton County, Georgia based on a manuscript list dating from 1905; no supporting specimens are known. At present L. melissa is not known in the eastern U.S. south of Pennsylvania.
The distribution of L. m. samuelis has also been confused by records probably belonging to subspecies of L. argyrognomon (Bergstrasser).
266 Shapiro: On Northeastern butterflies Vol. 23, no. 4
These include Scudder's (1889) records from Anticosti, Cape Breton, and the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. All of the definite localities known to me from which L. m. samuelis has been recorded are listed below (in part from Nabokov, 1943):
New Hampshire: Nashua, Hillsboro Co. (W. P. Comstock, amnh)1
Massachusetts: (no data) Angus, Edwards colls, (amnh)
New York: Tonawanda Indian Reservation, Genesee Co.: Clayton, Jefferson Co.
(Forbes, 192,8); "Adirondacks," no date (Bruce, cu); Albany, Karner, Colonie,
all Albany Co. (usnm, amnh, nysm, mcz, ansp, cu); Brooklyn, Kings Co.
(Scudder, 1889) Pennsylvania: Wayne Co. (usnm); "Pa." (mcz) Ohio: Sylvania, Lucas Co. (D. B. Stallings coll.) Michigan: Detroit, Wayne Co. (mcz); Ness Lake (T. N. Freeman coll.); Spring
Lake, Ottawa Co. (B. Smith, cu) Indiana: "dune region" (Porter Co.?) (Nielsen, 1962) Illinois: 'northern Illinois" (Scudder, 1889) Ontario: London (Scudder, 1889; mcz); Toronto (Scudder, 1889; D. B. Stallings,
T. N. Freeman colls.); Norfolk Co. (Dunlop, 1965); Simcoe, Norfolk Co. (Holmes,
1964).
The western limits of the range of L. m. samuelis are not well known. Lycaeides m. melissa (Edwards) occurs eastward throughout North Dakota (Puckering and Post, 1960), on the western plains of Minnesota and southeast to Olmsted County (Macy and Shepard, 1941), and in Burnett County, northwestern Wisconsin (Royer, 1962). The subspecies of melissa thus appear to be separated by an area where neither occurs, but the distance between them is comparable to that separating isolated populations of L. m. samuelis from one another. Lycaeides argyrognomon scudderii (Edwards) occurs widely in Minnesota and has been reported from Lake County, Michigan (Nielsen, 1951). Otherwise it seems to occur north of the range of L. m. samuelis, from Manitoba to eastern Quebec. In the Maritime Provinces and Labrador other subspecies, L. a. aster (Edwards) and L. a. empetri (Freeman), occur north of the range of L. m. samuelis. Although largely allopatric in the east, the two Lycaeides do overlap in the western half of the continent.
Lycaeides melissa samuelis and its host plant, Lupinus perennis, are usually associated with sandy soils. In New York the? plant is widespread on such soils (House, 1924; Beauchamp, 1923; Bray, 1915) and more colonies of the butterfly certainly await discovery. Bruce's record from the Adirondacks remains ambiguous; lupine occurs widely on the west slope and also in the Lake Champlain region.
1 Abbreviations: amnh = American Museum of Natural History, New York; ansp = Academy of Natural Sci ences, Philadelphia; cu — Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; aicz =z Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, Cambridge, Mass.; nysm = New York State Museum, Albany; usnm = United States National Museum, Washington, D.C.
1969
Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society
267
Colias interior Scudder
This species occurs in the Adirondack region (Forbes, 1928) and Tug Hill (R. T. Carde, personal communication) in northern New York and has been reported from high elevations in Virginia (Clark and Clark, 1951). It has not been found in south-central New York. Its occurrence has long been suspected in Pennsylvania, but could not be substantiated byTietz(1952).
A fresh male of this species was collected on a beaver meadow in the Tioga State Forest north of Cedar Run, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, on July 11, 1968 by the author. The locality is open with a heavy growth of blueberry, bracken, sweet fern, and grasses on dry ground among the tree stumps, and sedges and cutgrass (Leersia oryzoides) around the pond. The elevation is about 1800 feet, and the area is a deeply dissected plateau and lies in the Canadian Zone.
Poanes massasoit (Scudder)
This species is common on the coastal plain in marshes and marsh-meadows from southern New England to southern New Jersey. On the piedmont it extends to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (G. Ehle, personal communication) and near Washington, D.C., (Clark, 1932; Andersen, 1963). There are no authenticated reports farther south. In New York it is reported from the southeastern counties (coastal plain, Hudson Valley) (Forbes, 1928). Scudder (1889) gives a record from Wyoming, Pennsylvania (presumably Luzerne County). Otherwise in Pennsylvania, the species is limited to the southeastern corner (Philadelphia, Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery, Chester and Lancaster Counties) (Shapiro, 1966). However, it occurs locally from southern Ontario to Wisconsin, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa, around the Great Lakes (Nielsen, 1963; Price, 1948). This disjunct distribution, breaking across the Appalachians and the Allegheny plateau, is repeated in other marsh Hesperiidae.
On July 18, 1968 this species was discovered on a beaver meadow southwest of Gracie, Cortland County, New York. It was subsequently found half a mile away, at Sphaerium Brook and Mud Pond on the Lloyd-Cornell Reservation near McLean, Tompkins County, within the same drainage basin. It remained on the wing until July 30. Careful searching failed to reveal its presence in similar habitats in central New York outside the Beaver Creek basin.
The fifteen specimens collected by the author and R. T. Carde were compared with material from Spring Valley, Rockland County, and Monroe, Orange County, N.Y. and from Downingtown, Chester County,
268
Shapiro: On Northeastern butterflies Vol. 23, no. 4
Pennsylvania and Mt. Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey. The Gracie-McLean butterflies differ in having a well developed upperside pattern in the males (orange spots always present on hindwing, usually on forewing) and a complete, "viator-like" pattern in the females. The males resemble one female figured by Clark (1932, pi. 53, fig. 9) and the females resemble another (pi. 53, fig. 5). The blotch on the underside of the hindwing is always clear yellow.
The unique coloration and spatial isolation of the Gracie-McLean population (130 miles from the nearest known colony to the southeast, 150 miles from any to the west, and 95 miles from the unverified Wyoming, Pennsylvania locality) suggest that this is a relict population rather than a recent colonization.
The Gracie beaver meadow is not permanently wet, and it has been forested in modern times. It could not have supported a relict population of P. massasoit continuously. Elsewhere within the morainic Beaver Creek basin are bogs and marshes in various stages of development. The Mud Pond vegetation is a fairly typical sedge and Sphagnum mat building out into open water. The area of the pond has shrunk drastically from its postglacial maximum, but habitat suitable for P. massasoit may have been present continuously there. Although P. massasoit was commoner on the beaver meadow than at Mud Pond in 1968, the former was presumably colonized fairly recently—perhaps from the latter. The diversity of wet habitats in the basin could have permitted the survival of the species over thousands of years by colonizations over distances of only a mile or two.
Poanes massasoit was not collected during the biological survey of the Lloyd-Cornell Reservation (Forbes, 1926) but the butterfly collecting was not thorough, and the species is easily overlooked.
A movement similar to that hypothesized for P. massasoit seems to have occurred in the McLean population of Chlosyne harrisii (Scudder) (Nymphalidae). In the 43 years since the survey this relatively conspicuous species has moved half a mile in two steps, from Mud Pond to the extreme northeast corner of the basin. It is now completely absent from its former haunts. Its foodplant, Aster umbellatus, is still present, but shaded by shrub growth which has developed since then; the plant is in my experience more shade-tolerant than the butterfly. Dethier (1959) and Dethier and MacArthur (1964) observed that density-dependent emigration regulated populations of this butterfly before the available food was exhausted. This mechanism may have insured the perpetuation of the McLean colony by encouraging colonization well before the deterioration of its original habitat. The nearest known colony
1969
Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society
269
beyond the Beaver Creek basin is in southern Cortland County, 12
miles distant.
Literature Cited
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