Argynnina hobartia

Argynnina hobartia (Westwood, 1851)
Hobart Brown
(previously known as Lasiommata hobartia)
SATYRINAE, NYMPHALIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA

Don Herbison-Evans
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Argynnina hobartia
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

The Caterpillars of this species are brown with a faint darker line along the back, and a pale line along each side. The head is rounded, but the tail is forked. The Caterpillars feed on grasses ( POACEAE ) including various Australian native species, as well as the introduced :

Perennial Ryegrass ( Lolium perenne ).

The upper surfaces of the wings of the adult butterflies are brown with pale yellow patches. The forewings each have a subapical row of small white spots. The upper sides of the hindwings each have two or three eyespots.

underside
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

Underneath, the forewings are fawn with black and off-white patches, and a row of three white spots. The underside of each hindwing is brown with dull orange patches, and a subterminal arc of small eyespots. The butterflies have a wing span of about 3 cms.

This species is found in Australia only in

Tasmania,

as several races :

hobartia in the east and the mountains,

montana Couchman & Couchman, 1977, inland in the mountains above 900 metres, and

tasmanica (Lyell, 1900) in the west.

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 490-491.

John Obadiah Westwood,
The genera of diurnal lepidoptera,
Volume 2 (1851), p. 387 (note to species No. 21).