callippe fritillary
Who doesn’t love a great butterfly picture? This is the Speyeria callippe,
callippe fritillary. There are 30 species of fritillary butterflies in two genera and hundreds of sub-species. It was taken at Craters of the Moon National Monument in June of 2018. 43°27’38.85″N, 113°33’32.00″W.
These butterflies usually inhabit sagebrush, dry woodland, edge of forests, chaparral and grassy hillsides. The Craters Monument is part of a sagebrush dominated landscape know as the Lava Fields ecoregion of the Snake River Plain so we expect to see them there.
Like many other butterflies, their caterpillars are very selective about what they eat. There would be no fritillaries without violets and there are plenty of species of them in the sagebrush landscape of the region.
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