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The assembled lists and charts present all substantiated historical records of butterfly species ever to have been recorded, collected, or observed within the various counties of Maryland and Delaware or within the District of Columbia or Baltimore City as indicated. To access the main pages for Maryland, Delaware, or D.C., click on the desired link above. Each page contains lists divided by county (where applicable); cumulative state lists for Maryland and Delaware, compiled from this data, are also provided. All records are based on material appearing either in available published lepidoptera literature or otherwise known to the author Richard H. Smith, Jr. from his field work and numerous lepidopterist contacts. Major references for all of the included records are also listed below. The data timespan of the references for the majority of the material covers the period from the early twentieth century up to the present.
Mr. Smith has maintained such lists for several years as coordinator of butterfly species records for Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia for the former USGS NPWRC website "Butterflies of North America" and for the current successor website "Butterflies and Moths of North America" (BAMONA) at http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org. The butterfly lists on this website and on BAMONA will be updated by late January each year and so will represent the latest and most complete listings of all butterfly species ever reported and substantiated in each of the above jurisdictions. We will attempt to maintain consistency between butterfly records on this local website and on the BAMONA website. Note that butterfly lists on this site are easily accessible for review and can be printed in single-page format for each jurisdiction. In addition, this local website also contains butterfly records in large tabular format (see "Maryland [or Delaware] Butterfly Occurrence Chart" under the respective state selections). For an informative statewide summary in table format with additional biological species data, also see the "Maryland Butterflies Biological Summary and Checklist" below.
Note that by definition of the listing process here and on BAMONA, if a species does not appear under a particular county or city, the reason for its absence is merely that no one has yet reported it for that particular jurisdiction. There is no reason to conclude that the absence of a record implies that a species does not occur naturally in a particular jurisdiction; however, absences from entire regions, such as from the Allegheny Plateau or Lower Coastal Plain regions of Maryland, would more strongly support such a conclusion.
Several of the files below are in PDF format; if you don't have Adobe Acrobat, click the button below to download the free Adobe Reader.
Accidental (A), Stray (S), and Extirpated (X) Species Indicators
Based on the known typical geographic ranges and habitat areas for the species recorded under each of the jurisdictional lists presented via the links above, we must conclude that certain of these records represent occurrences that are the result of either unusual strays or accidental introductions. Also, it has become apparent from field work and from butterfly enthusiasts' observations over the past 15 years that several of the species have been extirpated from a number of the jurisdictions for which we have past records. Some of the extirpations are even statewide and appear to be relatively recent. Most of these disappearances, we suspect, are due to human induced habitat loss or adverse habitat alteration. Other suspected reasons include wider use of powerful modern pesticides, alien insect predators and parasitoids, effects of invasive alien plants and over-abundant deer browse on native larval hostplants and adult nectar sources, and inability of a species to adapt to minor shifts in seasonal temperature and drought extremes and vegetative profiles caused by global climate change. Species entries on the jurisdictional lists that fall into the categories above are indicated as such by the letters A (for Accidental), S (for Stray), and X (for eXtirpated). Detailed definitions of each of these indicators are given below. If anyone observes a species in a jurisdiction for which it is indicated here as Extirpated (X), the observer is asked to please immediately inform the listing originator Richard H. (Dick) Smith at Richard.Smith@jhuapl.edu of your very welcomed discovery so that the extirpation indicator can be removed.
Definitions:
Accidental (A) - indicates a species not known to stray widely and whose natural range and habitat are considerably outside of the jurisdiction of record; thus, the record is probably due to an accidental introduction or to an escape from an enclosed local live display.
Stray (S) - indicates a species that is not resident nor known to migrate or immigrate regularly into the jurisdiction of record, but which is known to exhibit occasional isolated occurrences considerably outside of its normal range, including at least one occurrence in the jurisdiction of record.
Extirpated (X) - indicates a species that was once resident in the jurisdiction of record, but no new reports have been logged for it in the jurisdiction of record within at least the past 15 years.
Species Occurrence Levels and State Range
Lynn Davidson of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Wildlife & Heritage Division and Mr. Smith have composed, and Mr. Smith has recently updated (in 2009), a Biological Summary and Checklist on Maryland butterflies which contains information on occurrence level, flight period, general habitat, nutrition sources visited by adults, larval host plants, and state range for each of the 157 species and subspecies ever recorded in Maryland. The Occurrence Level (OL) column in the checklist specifies the current assessment of the rarity and occurrence status of each species. The State Range column indicates the current distribution in Maryland and cites the historical distribution and stray status of each species in each of the primary Maryland geographic regions. This list may be accessed below. The list may be printed as four sides of 11" x 8-1/2" sheets in landscape format for personal use.
Want to help gather data on the current status of butterfly species in D.C. and MD? Visit the Volunteer page for details.
Maryland Butterflies Biological Summary and Checklist
Interested lepidopterists, butterfliers, and collectors are invited to inquire about currently listed records and to contribute records that appear to be new for any of the above jurisdictions. Potential new records should be submitted by e-mail to Richard H. Smith at Richard.Smith@jhuapl.edu. The reporter should be able to qualify his or her records by at least a photograph or a very thorough explanation depicting the specimen's distinguishing characteristics for identification. In the case of record submissions for small hairstreaks and skippers, usually only a clear photograph will qualify for indisputable proof of identification. Field data should also be included and should consist at least of specific locality (details at the discretion of the reporter), exact date seen, and any associated nectar plants, larval hosts, and habitat or butterfly activity information of note.
General
Opler, Paul A. 1983 (April). County Atlas of Eastern United States Butterflies (1840-1982). Office of Endangered Species, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, DC 20240.
Lepidopterists' Society Season Summaries for years 1959 to present (published annually by The Lepidopterists' Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles, CA 90007).
Personal field notes and collection of the author (Richard H. Smith, Jr.) and communications with numerous local amateur and professional lepidopterists I have known from the late 1960's to the present.
Maryland and District of Columbia
Clark, Austin H. 1932. The butterflies of the District of Columbia and vicinity. U.S. National Museum Bulletin No. 157. 337pp.
Wagner, Warren H., Jr. 1941. District of Columbia butterfly notes (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera). Entomological News (published by the Academy of Natural Sciences, Phila., PA 19103) 52(7): 196-200 and 52(9): 245-249.
Simmons, Robert S. and Andersen, William A. 1956 to 1984. Notes on Maryland lepidoptera: Contribution #1 in Lepidopterists News (1956) and Contributions #2 (1962), #3 (1963), #5 (1976), and #6 (1979) in Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society (both published by The Lepidopterists' Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles, CA 90007). Contributions #4 (1970(71)), #7 (1978(80)), #8 (1978(80)), #9 (1978(80)), #10 (1981(83)), and #11 (1984) in Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera (published by the Lepidoptera Research Foundation, Inc., Beverly Hills, CA 90210).
Fales, John H. 1974 (December). Check-list of the skippers and butterflies of Maryland. Chesapeake Science (continued as journal Estuaries starting in 1978; published by the Estuarine Research Federation, University of Mississippi, University MS 38677) 15(4): 222-229.
Opler, Paul A. 1982 (February). Butterflies and skippers of the Washington, D.C. area (District of Columbia, Montgomery Co., and Prince Georges Co., Maryland, Alexandria Co., Arlington Co., and Fairfax Co., Virginia). Office of Endangered Species, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, DC 20240.
Fales, John H. 1987(March). The butterflies of Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C. The Maryland Naturalist (published by the Natural History Society of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21218) 31(1): 5-24.
Delaware
Notes from the Frank Morton Jones collection (late 1890's through 1930's) at the Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, CT, accumulated by Dr. David M. Wright from Lansdale, PA in winter 1985-86.
Notes from the Frank Morton Jones collection (late 1890's through 1940's) and other specimens (1950's to 1980's) at the University of Delaware collection, Dept. of Entomology, Newark, DE 19717, accumulated by Dr. David M. Wright from Lansdale, PA in winter 1985-86.
Shapiro, Arthur M. 1966. Butterflies of the Delaware Valley. Special Publication of the American Entomological Society, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy., Philadelphia, PA 19103. (lithoprinted in the USA by Cushing-Malloy, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI 1966). 79pp.
Woodbury, Elton N. 1994. Butterflies of Delmarva. Delaware Nature Society, Inc. and Tidewater Publishers, Centreville, MD 21617. 138pp.