The Colorado Alpine is a member of the Satyridae subfamily of Nymphalidae

Nymphalidae

The Nymphalidae is a family of about 5,000 species of butterflies which are distributed throughout most of the world. These are usually medium sized to large butterflies. Most species have a reduced pair of forelegs and many hold their colourful wings flat when resting. They are also called...

. It is found in alpine Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 and Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 in the Rocky Mountains

Rocky Mountains

The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

 as well as various mountain ranges in eastern Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 35-38 mm. The upperside is dull gray-brown with a slight luster. Two eye-spots are near the tip both above and below on the forewing. These are usually located in a red patch. The underside of the hind wing is silver-gray with very small dark markings.

The larvae probably feed on grasses and sedges.

Subspecies

• Erebia callias callias (Rocky Mountains)
• Erebia callias sibirica Staudinger, 1881 (Saur, Tarbagatai Mountains)
• Erebia callias altajana Staudinger, 1901 (Altai Mountains)
• Erebia callias simulata Warren, 1933 (Sayan Mountains)
• Erebia callias tsherskiensis Dubatolov, 1992 (Far East)

Taxonomy

Erebia callias has been lumped with the Siberian brassy ringlets as they are almost alike morphologically

Morphology (biology)

In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....

. Though one might suspect stronger differentiation and perhaps marked cryptic speciation

Cryptic species complex

In biology, a cryptic species complex is a group of species which satisfy the biological definition of species—that is, they are reproductively isolated from each other—but whose morphology is very similar ....

 across the wide range, the Rocky Mountains population is apparently a very recent isolate. Its ancestors apparently crossed over the Bering Strait

Bering Strait

The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik, is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65°40'N,...

 at the end of the Wisconsinian glaciation, about 15.000-10.000 years ago.

External links

• Butterflies and Moths of North America