Endangered
Illidge's ant blue
Acrodipsas illidgei
Illidge's ant-blue butterfly, is an endangered species of butterfly endemic to Australia.
Appearance
The eggs of the Illidge's ant-blue butterfly are white and have an average diameter of 0.7 mm. In its caterpillar stage it is white. The pupa of the butterfly is approximately 1 cm lengthwise and is brown.
The wingspan of the butterfly is approximately 2 cm.
Range and habitat
Illidge's ant-blue butterfly, is an endangered species of butterfly endemic to Australia. This species can be found at six confirmed sites: Mary River Heads, Beaver Rock and Maaroom in the Fraser Coast Region (Queensland). Redland Bay and Point Halloran in the City of Redland (Queensland), and Brunswick Heads (New South Wales).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The larvae are transported to the ants' nests by the ants where they feed on excretions from the larvae, while a larva on the other hand feeds on developing ants (perhaps its regurgitations). There have been no recorded natural enemies of the Illidge's ant-blue, except for the exposed immature stage as an egg to hunting spiders.
In crisis
The essential threat to the existence of Illidge's ant-blue butterfly arises as a result of the destruction of mangrove habitats. To prevent the extinction of the Illidge's ant-blue butterfly the state government of Queensland granted the species permanently protected status in 1990.
Named moths and butterflies with a high threat category are often known from a small range and a thin series. Host-plant loss leaves little to recount.
Illidge's ant blue is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Illidge's ant blue, Wikidata item Q3768755. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
