Kingdom Animalia Order Lepidoptera Genus Aricia Rank Species | Phylum Arthropoda Family Lycaenidae Scientific name Aricia icarioides | |
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Lower classifications Fender's blue butterfly, Mission blue butterfly | ||
Aricia icarioides, or Boisduval's blue, is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family found in North America.
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Aricia icarioides has been classified in at least four different genera since it was named by Jean Baptiste Boisduval in 1852. It started out in Lycaena, was transferred to Icaricia by Nabokov (Hodges et al., 1983), moved to Aricia by Bálint and Johnson (1997), merged with some other genera in the supergenus Plebejus by Gorbunov (2001), which was accepted by Opler & Warren (2003), however, Lamas (2004) among others use Aricia. Synonymy, subgenera, and subspecies vary considerably depending on the author.
Their range extends throughout the western US and Canada from southern Saskatchewan to British Columbia.
Larvae feed on species of lupines (Lupinus).
Wingspan: 21 to 32 mm.
Similar species
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