My walk today.

[cheddar-caveman]

Being bright and even sunny on and off, I was hoping to see quite a few butterflies but was disappointed with only two sightings - a Ringlett and a Marbled White which, incidently, is not listed under the Pieridae (whites) heading on the home page??

[Annie]

Hello, Cheddar Caveman! What's your local hunting ground? I'm quite near you, and wondered where you saw the Green Hairstreak? (I tried the name of the place you gave but could not get any results on multimap or google maps)

Marble White is family Nymphalidae (I assumed it was under
Pieridae too until a few months ago when I realised as I was reading about it on this site)

edited to add: I've just looked at google maps again and found it! (goodness knows why I didn't find it the first time) - it's a large area, what's the best way to approach it and is there anywhere sensible to park?

[Hamearis]

Marbled White is a Brown (with bits of white on it)
Ham

[Annie]

this brings me neatly to a question I wanted to ask but forgot about!

family Satyridae (browns) is not given it's own listing on the UK butterflies title page - are they not considered to be a separate family? I was a bit confused because they're listed as a separate family in some of the books I've been reading.

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question!

[cheddar-caveman]

Thank's for that Annie. Well I'll stand corrected! Wonder why they don't call it a Marbled Brown then???

I saw the Hairstreak on top of Fry's hill, the large hill to the north of Axbridge, which has four access points from the A371 bypass. One opposite the old Axbridge station building, one about 300mtr further towards Cheddar, just as you enter the 40mph speed zone, a third lane a further 500 or so metres further on again, marked the Parsonage and antother a further 500mtrs, before you get to Yeo Valley depot.

Where are you by the way, saying you are near here?

[Annie]

Cheddar Caveman - I have sent you a PM about this!

[Padfield]

Where you draw the line with superfamily, family, subfamily, genus &c. is determined by agreed convention, not by nature herself. Not all authors appear to agree with the same conventions, though! For this site, Pete (humbly) follows Fauna Europaea and this currently regards the Satyrinae as a subfamily of Nymphalidae. The pertinent bit of the classification can be found on this page of FE:

http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=7202

Whatever names you use, it is clear that 'nymphalids' and 'satyrids' are more closely related to each other than they are to, say blues (closeness of relationship being determined by how far you have to go back to find the most recent common ancestor of all in the group). It is also clear, as you point out, Annie and others, that the marbled white is a satyrid (whether that means subfamily Satyrinae or family Satyridae).

Guy

[Pete Eeles]

Pete (humbly) follows Fauna Europaea and this currently regards the Satyrinae as a subfamily of Nymphalidae

I have to say that the whole taxonomy debate has to be one of the biggest challenges I've had with this website!

Cheers,

- Pete