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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the July 9, 2017 Newsletter issued from Rancho Regenesis in the woods ±4kms west of Ek Balam Ruins; elevation ~40m (~130 ft), N20.876°, W88.170°; north-central Yucatán, MÉXICO
MEXICAN SAILOR
Above you can feast your eyes on a commonly seen butterfly at the ranch nowadays. You can imagine how pretty the powdery blue shows up against the landscape's deep, shadowy greenness. In the picture, the butterfly is in a less-than-pastoral setting: On the aluminum frame of a seatless, backless chair sitting next to the hut. The butterfly is nearly as pretty in a side view, as seen below:
That's the Mexican Sailor, DYNAMINE POSTVERTA, an exceptionally wide-ranging and variable species distributed from the US's warmer areas south to South America's Amazon region.
With any species distributed over such a vast area it's typical for regional variations to show up. However, it's very unusual for a species to show such drastically different appearances as this one. A page at the ButterfliesofAmerica.Com website shows some of them.
In the next section we'll look at a species that was a challenge to identify because its species were so similar. Over the years the Mexican Sailor has posed a very different challenge because of its many color and pattern differences. You can imagine how many names it's been assigned by early lepidopterists not knowing of its variability.