wingspan : 38 mm
in 2008 we wrote : "Lycaenid collected at Topo, 1300 m. we learnt it is a new species presently being described by Robert Busby ; we'll put back the original photographs when the description is published."
today, september 2011, we put these pictures back in place because something happened, that we develop on the "New Facts" page.
in 2008 I was lucky to take this picture, the first one for this species which, at that time, had not been described ;
when Robert Busby - the best expert on Lycaenidae from Ecuador - asked me to blur the picture until he published the species description, I agreed.
today another author published his own description.
when I got interested in entomology, I learnt there were rules applicable to new species descriptions :
- technical rules:
. work on a minimum of two specimens,
. if nearly all known specimens come from one place, do not base a description on a lonely specimen from another location,
. if you want to create a new Genus, working on both male and female is mandatory ;
- common sense rules:
. get in touch with those who know this butterfly,
. read carefully what has been published ;
but, as goes Julio Numhauser song, "cambia... todo cambia..." and, reading this description, I wonder if these rules continue to apply ?
departing from these rules would not be a good idea.
and to make things worse the author, who never saw this butterfly, presents it as a "cloud forest species", which it never was ; we collected seven specimens all between 1100 and 1350 meters.
