The Palos Verdes blue is a small endangered butterfly native to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwest Los Angeles County, California, United States. As its distribution has been proven to be limited to one single site it has one of the best claims to being the world's rarest butterfly.
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is a non-profit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates considered to be essential to biological diversity and ecosystem health. It is named in honor of an extinct California butterfly, the Xerces blue.
Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies, with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfly species.
The Apollo or mountain Apollo, is a butterfly of the family Papilionidae.
The Miami blue is a small butterfly that is native to coastal areas of southern Florida. It is a subspecies of Thomas's blue. Once common throughout its range, it has become critically endangered, and is considered to be near extinction. Its numbers have recently been increased by a captive breeding program at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution during history. The term is equivalent to the concept of indigenous or autochthonous species. A wild organism is known as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced. If an introduced species causes substantial ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage, it may be regarded more specifically as an invasive species.
Pyrgus ruralis lagunae, the Laguna Mountains skipper, is a butterfly of the family Hesperiidae. It is a subspecies of Pyrgus ruralis.
Myrtle's silverspot is a medium-sized butterfly in the brush foot family (Nymphalidae), an endangered subspecies of the zerene fritillary. It is endemic to California, where it is known from only about four locations just north of the San Francisco Bay Area, including two at Point Reyes National Seashore. Its wingspan is approximately 2.2 inches (56 mm). The upper surfaces of the wings are golden brown with numerous black spots and lines. The undersides are brown, orange and tan with black lines and silver and black spots. Larvae are dark colored with many sharp branching spines on their backs. Myrtle's silverspot is larger and paler than the closely related Behrens' silverspot, which is now limited to the vicinity of Point Arena in Mendocino County. Myrtle's silverspot is also closely related to the Oregon silverspot.
Neduba extincta, the Antioch Dunes shieldback katydid, is an extinct species of katydid that was endemic to California, United States. It was not discovered until after its extinction.
Glaucopsyche, commonly called blues, is a Holarctic genus of butterfly in the family Lycaenidae, found mainly in Palearctic Asia. For other species called "blues" see subfamily Polyommatinae and genus Plebejus.
Asclepias speciosa is a milky-sapped perennial plant in the dogbane family (Apocynaceae), known commonly as the showy milkweed and is found in the western half of North America.
Plebejus idas, the Idas blue or northern blue, is a butterfly of the family Lycaenidae. It belongs to the subfamily of Polyommatinae.
Glaucopsyche lygdamus, the silvery blue, is a small butterfly native to North America.
Icaricia icarioides, or Boisduval's blue, is a butterfly of the family Lycaenidae found in North America. This butterfly has 25 recognized subspecies.
Lynn Kimsey is an entomologist, taxonomist, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis since 1989. Her specialties are bees and wasps; and insect diversity and evolution.
Speyeria zerene hippolyta, the Oregon silverspot, is a threatened butterfly that is found in the U.S. states of California and Oregon. It is a subspecies of Speyeria zerene.
The U.S. state of California has instituted numerous conservation programs, policies, laws, reserves and Habitat restoration projects throughout the state to facilitate the health and migration of the western population of the monarch butterfly. The population of western monarchs require very different breeding and overwintering habitat when compared to the eastern population of monarch butterflies. They require specific micro-climatic conditions to survive the winter and they are sensitive to habitat changes at the overwintering sites. The large aggregations of butterflies are seen as the most vulnerable at their overwintering locations along the coast. Many monarch overwintering sites are contained within the "coastal zone"; an area defined by the Coastal Zone Management Act to be 1000 yards inland from the high tide mark. Large number of overwintering sites are outside the coastal zone. There are more than 450 overwintering sites in California.
