Duke of Burgundy Fritillary

• It is the only European species of a family with more than fourteen hundred species in tropical America: an isolated relic on this continent.
• It needs woodland clearings at a particular point in the succession, neither too open nor too closed, and the abandonment of traditional woodland management has driven it out of much of its European range.
• The males, fiercely territorial, perch in the sun and chase off any insect that enters their patch.
• It is the only European species of its family, the riodinids, a group of more than a thousand species almost all concentrated in the American tropics. In Europe it is a taxonomic rarity.
• Its caterpillar depends on cowslips and oxlips, and it needs plants growing in woodland clearings with partial shade: if the clearing closes over or opens up too much, the plant no longer serves it.
• That narrow requirement explains its decline: the species has vanished from much of its range in the United Kingdom and other countries, not for lack of food plants but through the abandonment of the traditional woodland practices that created clearings.
• Males perch with their wings open on low vegetation and defend small territories in the sunny clearings.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Woodland clearings and edges and limestone meadows with primroses

Size at birth

The caterpillar measures 1.6 mm on leaving the egg, after eating the whole crown and leaving a circular hole; the fourth instar reaches 16-17 mm and does not exceed 2 cm even after six weeks of feeding

Sexual maturity

The males are strongly territorial and keep watch from a prominent leaf at the edge of the scrub, from which they shoot out at rivals; the females are elusive and fly low looking for a laying site. The adults hardly visit flowers

Gestation / incubation

The eggs take 7 to 21 days to hatch depending on the weather; the caterpillar goes through four instars over about four weeks and leaves the food plant to pupate among tussocks of grass; the chrysalis overwinters until spring

Litter / clutch size

Clutches of one or a few eggs on the underside of the leaves of primrose (Primula vulgaris) and cowslip (Primula veris), in May and June; the eggs look like tiny pearls

Sources consulted: Butterfly Conservation (Reino Unido) · Tolman y Lewington · Thomas y Lewington, The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland · Woodland Trust · iNaturalist, ficha Hamearis lucina · Butterfly Conservation Yorkshire, ficha Duke of Burgundy · Butterfly Conservation, ficha Duke of Burgundy · ficha de especie de Hamearis lucina · UK Butterflies (descripcion de Frohawk)

Best time: Flies in May and June in sunlit woodland clearings and limestone grassland with sheltering scrub, always in very low numbers