Vanessa (butterfly)

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Vanessa
Temporal range: Chadronian-Holocene
File:Marzahn Gaerten der Welt 08-2015 img12 Red Admiral.jpg
Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta
Scientific classification
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Vanessa

Fabricius, 1807
Species

See text

Synonyms

Fieldia (Niculescu, 1979)
Cynthia (Fabricius, 1807)
Pyrameis (Hübner, 1819)
Bassaris (Hübner, 1821)
Ammiralis (Rennie, 1832)
Neopyrameis (Scudder, 1889)
Fieldia (Niculescu, 1979)

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Vanessa is a genus of brush-footed butterflies. Many people are familiar with it, as it has a near-global distribution and includes conspicuous species such as the red admirals (e.g., Red Admiral, Indian Red Admiral, New Zealand Red Admiral), the Kamehameha, and the painted ladies of subgenus Cynthia: Painted Lady, American Painted Lady, Vanessa Annabella or West Coast Lady, Australian Painted Lady, etc. For African Admirals see genus, Antanartia. Recently several members traditionally considered to be in the genus Antanartia have been determined to belong within the genus Vanessa.[1]

The name of the genus may have been taken from the girl's name. Though it has been suggested the name may be a variant of "Phanessa", from the name of an Ancient Greek deity, this is unlikely. The name of the deity is actually not "Phanessa" but Phanes. Johan Christian Fabricius, the entomologist who named this genus, normally used the original forms of the names of classical divinities when he created new scientific names.

Species

There are 22 extant species, arranged here alphabetically.[2]

Fossil species

A fossil species, V. amerindica, is known from a specimen found in the Chadronian-aged Florissant Lagerstatte, from Late Eocene Colorado, and coexisted with several other extinct butterfly taxa.[3]

In popular culture

John Shade discusses the genus Vanessa in reference to his wife in Nabokov's Pale Fire.[4]

References

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  3. Miller, Jacqueline Y., and Frederick Martin Brown. "A new Oligocene fossil butterfly, Vanessa amerindica (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), from the Florissant formation, Colorado." Bulletin of the Allyn Museum (USA) (1989).
  4. Nabokov, Vladimir (1992) Pale Fire. New York: Everyman's Library 133

External links