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Junonia sp.
"The neotropical Junonia "species" are very difficult to separate...There is general agreement among taxonomists that there are 2 very similar species i.e. evarete and genoveva...I am very wary of making identifications of Junonia species on the basis of photos...To get a reliable ID you MUST have photos of dorsal AND ventral wing surfaces AND antennae details of a given specimen...There is no hope of getting an accurate ID from a single photo..." - Adrian Hoskins, through Bayucca. http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/926...
I got yesterday a mail from Adrian Hoskins (see learnaboutbutterflies.com, link below). He would not confirm any of these 2 species from this shot. I would just leave it like "Junonia sp." and add Genoveva and Evarete in the notes.
Some notes from Adrian: "The neotropical Junonia "species" are very difficult to separate...There is general agreement among taxonomists that there are 2 very similar species i.e. evarate and genoveva...I am very wary of making identifications of Junonia species on the basis of photos...To get a reliable ID you MUST have photos of dorsal AND ventral wing surfaces AND antennae details of a given specimen...There is no hope of getting an accurate ID from a single photo..."
Thanks and it seems that this one might actually be Genoveva, as I can see some dark shades on the underside of the clubs. But I am not 100% sure. I try to get a confirmation...
Ok, Bayucca, you know that I rely on you, so I fixed the ID as you sugested. Anyway, I uploaded another pic of this butterfly, with a side view, maybe it can help to ID it more precisely. BTW, thank you again.
The mean difference between the 2 shots is age. Evarete and Genoveva are really identical beside the color of the underside (!) of the club of the antennae. Black/dark in Genoveva and "creamy" in Evarete (same color as the antennae itself, meaning no color contrasts as in Genoveva). That's the only (!) reliable criteria to separate the 2 species, however, some other authors criteria but I trust the immense knowledge of Andrew Neild. That's also the reason why I IDed the other one as Evarete, since I can't see any darker underside of the clubs (see #2). Unfortunately you have to accept that probably some of the Genoveva/Evarete are mis-ID, specially on "non-reliable" sources. In this shot I can see some dark antennae tips but I can't judge the underside. The blue color is not so important for separation since there is a blue Evarete form and anyway a great variability between the 2 species. So to be on the safe side you need a second shot of this one where you can see the underside of the clubs or you just call it Junonia sp. with the option of Evarete or Genoveva.
Below are some trustable links for showing the blue form, also seen in Brazil:
http://tolweb.org/Junonia_evarete/93981
http://eol.org/pages/162840/overview
http://wordsofthemonkey.blogspot.com/201...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nsg_db/3429...
Thank you, Livan. I found a site that narrows down the ID to subspecies (Hilaris)
I'm going to use scientific names to avoid confusion because some people call this Tropical, some call it Mangrove,. This comment is for this photo and the other spot that you linked here.
I haven't seen any Junonia evarete with that much blue in the wings, however, there are plenty of pics of Junonia genoveva with blue wings also genoveva occurs in South America, not sure if the other does. So maybe what you have here is Junonia genoveva
See here:
http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/And...