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Volume 24, Number 3
189
Masters, J. H., 1967. Observations on Arkansas Rhopalocera and a list of species occurring in northeastern Arkansas. Jour. Lepid. Soc. 21:206^209, 277.
Mather, B. and K. Mather, 1958. The butterflies of Mississippi. Tulane Univ. Stud. Zool. 6:6&-109.
dos Passos, C. F., 1964. A synonymic list of nearctic Rhopalocera. Mem. Lepid. Soc, No. 1. 145 pp.
Riotte, J. C. E., 1967. New and corrected butterfly records for Ontario and for Canada. Jour. Lepid. Soc. 21:135-137.
Ross, G. N. and E. N. Lambremont, 1963. An annotated supplement to the state list of Louisiana butterflies and skippers. Jour. Lepid. Soc. 17:148—158.
Shapiro, A. M., 1966. Butterflies of the Delaware Valley. Spec. Publ. Amer. Ent. Soc. 79 pp.
Sorenson, J. T., 1967. The Rhopalocera of Minnesota, Part III, family Papilionidae. Newsletter Assn. Minn. Ent. 1:56-57.
Weed, C. M., 1926. Butterflies. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. 286 pp.
THE AEGERIID RAMOSIA FRAGARIAE IN A FLIGHT TRAP, AND THE INTERPRETATION THEREOF
In mid-August 1966, my wife and I were camped at Poker Flat, an attractive small meadow at 5040 feet altitude in the forested Siskiyou Mountains of the northwest corner of Siskiyou County, California. On the thirteenth I foolishly kept my eye on a butterfly instead of on the ground, and ran over a small rock cliff. Fortunately I netted the brute, Parnassius phoebus sternitzkyi McDunnough, on the way down, but in landing head first on the talus lost considerable skin from arms, legs and side, and sprained an ankle. Next day I was glad just to sit around camp.
Luckily a flight trap, the simple, one-pole, P. H. Arnaud-adaptation of a Malaise trap, had been put up earlier. It was set on dry, rocky ground between the forest and the marshy southern edge of the meadow, directly above the headwaters of the West Branch of Indian Creek. To be doing something, I hobbled out to empty it every hour. It caught quantities of flies and wasps throughout the day, but at the 3 PM servicing, it contained also a series of a small black and orange clearwing moth, Ramosia fragariae (Hy. Edwards). None was caught before or after the 2 to 3 PM period.
I interpreted this as a surprisingly restricted flight period for the species, and later so reported it to several lepidopterist friends (I am a coleopterist). But when the specimens were readied for pinning and spreading a couple of years later, it was seen that there were twelve males and one female, so it is more likely that the female inadvertently flew into the trap and was followed by her hopeful suitors.
This swarming of a number of males around one female may be characteristic of these small clearwings. In my field notes for 26 July, 1964, referring to a spot near Route 14, altitude 8,825 feet, 1.5 miles northeast of the summit of Granite Pass in the Big Horn mountains of north central Wyoming, I recorded: "Near camp found a spot where $ S aegeriids were swarming, wasp-like, over a tuft of grass; took a series, then found a live 9 in [the tuft of] grass; ants were attacking the 9 . Got a couple more 2 $ nearby." These moths proved to be Ramosia chrysidipennis (Boisduval).
I am indebted to J. N. Shepard for identifying the butterfly, and to J. W. Tilden for the names of the moths.
Hugh B. Leech, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.