Lasiommata maera (Linnaeus, 1758) - Wall Butterfly.

The representatives of the subfamily Elymniinae Herrich- Schaffer, 1864 inhabit rather humid and shady biotopes but, nevertheless, their males exhibit territorial behaviour as well as the Satyrids of dry habitats, their perches rarely being stones but something else (such as the spots of light as in the above case of Pararge aegeria. This species flies mostly in meadows, but its English common name hints it is very fond of walls and other objects disturbing vegetation cover. This male occupied a very dusty road. It was an almost impossible task to photograph him as he considers me and my bycicle as the most valuable and noticeable pearches in his meadow and refused to sit on something else. Finally he happened to sit on the road from which I disturbed it initially.

Range: Morocco, Europe, Anterior Asia, Middle and South Ural, the southern West and Central Siberia, Altai, the Sayans, the mountains of E and SE Kazakhstan.

ssp.: ? ordona Fruhstorfer, 1909; range: forest-steppe zone of Siberia.

A forb meadow with birch groves on the interfluve between the Shadrikha and Zyryanka Rivulets at the village Lozhok at Akademgorodok [Novosibirsk Academy Town], Novosibirsk District and Province, West Siberia, Russia. 29th June 1998. O. Kosterin.

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