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LIST OF BUTTERFLIES RECORDED AT HASTINGS RESERVATION, MONTEREY CO., CA

Compiled by J. A. Powell
Professor, UC-Berkeley, Essig Museum of Entomlogy
March 2000

   The old Hastings insect list had 47 species of butterflies. I presumed it was compiled originally by Jean Linsdale and augmented by Don Linsdale in the 1950s, and maybe by other persons. I expected it to be fairly complete and accurate because butterflies are the most easily observed and identified insects and are sufficiently few in species richness that the whole fauna of a local area can be recorded by a diligent student. I was therefore surprised when we found several species on our first two butterfly counts, in June 1998 and 1999, that were not on the existing list. I reviewed the collection at the Oakland Museum in February 2000 and was even more surprised to find numerous discrepancies between the remaining specimens and the old list, including not only misidentified species, but species missing from the list and listed species missing from the collection as well. Click here for a list of butterflies on subsequent June counts.

   The butterflies occupied the top drawer of the steel cabinet housing the collection of specimens in 3 X 5" packets. Mice had entered and chewed into many of the packets from above, prior to transfer of the collection to Oakland. Evidently no effort had been made to salvage the remaining material since that time. I removed all of the packets that no longer hold specimens (about 35% of the total of ca. 275), assessed their species names, and packed them into two sealed plastic bags. There are a great many loose wings, evidently not palatable to mice, and I gathered these into two additional large baggies. Sooner or later dermestid beetles and/or psocid lice would infest this material if not sealed. Some species represented only by names on empty packets could be confirmed by presence of loose wings (e.g. Mourning Cloak and California Tortoise Shell, Nymphalis antiopa and N. californica). I then sorted all remaining packets having recognizable remains of butterflies into taxa and attempted to reconcile identifications of both the empty and occupied packets with the old list.

    The following list compiles the results of this search, along with more recently recorded species. Abbreviations: OM = species confirmed at Oakland Museum, including loose wings; FS = collected by F. Sala in 1992 (specimens at Hastings museum); UC = collected by UC students in April 1998 (voucher specimens retained by students)