Fritillary

[Schmetterling]

Can anyone identity this fritillary? The photograph was taken in the Cevennes, southern France.

[Padfield]

I'm actually a bit baffled by this. Can you give any more details, such as altitude?

It's obviously Melitaea, and obviously a female. But it's not in the heath fritillary group (the submarginal lunules are much too regular) and looks quite wrong for meadow fritillary. My first thought on seeing the picture was female Grisons fritillary, Melitaea varia, but this doesn't fly in the Cévennes (I had to look up where the Cévennes were ).

I'm probably missing something really obvious and will be interested to see what others think!

Guy

[Roger Gibbons]

Travelling in the Pyrenees at the moment, but female Meadow Fritillary would be my guess as the least unlikely of the options. The female can be quite dusky at some degree of altitude, and almost indistinguishable from female Grisons where both occur (which they do).

Roger

[Padfield]

I think I have to agree with you, Roger. To be honest, it looks so much like Grisons fritillary I had actually wondered if the photo might have been taken in the Alps and got muddled up with ones taken in the Cévennes. But if, in your experience, meadow fritillary can resemble Grisons fritillary so closely, then meadow it is. They don't look like this in my part of the Alps, but here meadow fritillaries tend to fly at lower altitudes anyway, so are not so compact and dark.

I can't think of anything else it might be.

Guy

[Schmetterling]

The altitude was 1400 to 1450 metres, open land scape with few trees and large areas of flowering meadow. There were meadow and heath fritillary present but this butterfly differed in both it's darkness and uniformity of markings. My first thought was Nickerel's or false heath fritillary.

[Padfield]

I would rule out Nickerl's and false heath (and heath) pretty categorically. Given that Grisons is out of the question by location and altitude, I am only left with meadow fritillary.

Guy