'' Cupido decolorata'', the Eastern short-tailed blue, is a small
butterfly
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprise ...
found in the
Palearctic (Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Spain, Romania, Slovakia and the Soviet Union - the European part, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Russian Federation) that belongs to the
lycaenids or blues family.
Description
It is a small butterfly with a sexual dimorphism, the upperside of the male is dull blue bordered with grey, that of the female is brown, both with a white fringe. The underside is pale grey a little suffused with blue and decorated with lines of small black dots.This species is similar to the Short-tailed blue (''
Everes argiades'') and to ''
Cupido alcetas''.
Biology
The larva on feeds on ''
Medicago sativa
Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, and silage, as w ...
'', ''
Medicago lupulina
''Medicago lupulina'', commonly known as black medick, nonesuch, or hop clover, is a plant of dry grassland belonging to the legume or clover family. Plants of the genus '' Medicago'', or bur clovers, are closely related to the true clovers ('' ...
''
See also
*
List of butterflies of Russia
This is a list of butterflies of Russia. About 540 species are known from Russia. The butterflies (mostly diurnal) and moths (mostly nocturnal) together make up the taxonomic order Lepidoptera.
The history of lepidopterology in Russia is conne ...
Images representing ''Cupido decoloratus'' at
Consortium for the Barcode of Life
The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) was an international initiative dedicated to supporting the development of DNA barcoding as a global standard for species identification. CBOL's Secretariat Office is hosted by the National Museum of ...
References
decolorata
Butterflies described in 1886
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