Lycaena helle

Appearance

Upperside dark brown, in the females of the spring brood the disc of the forewing reddish yellow, both wings with a sky-blue gloss, that is especially strong in the sun in live specimens. On the underside there is before the red submarginal band of the hindwing an always distinct bluish white lunate band, that in the female is usually continued on to the forewing and is accompanied by black dots. The summer-form obscura Ruhl (77e) is darker above and more yellow beneath.

Range and habitat

It is found from the Pyrenees to northern Norway and from Belgium east across the Palearctic to Central Asia, Siberia and Amur.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

The adult is what most collections hold. The larva — the feeding stage — is often undescribed for the rarest names.

Life history follows the order: complete metamorphosis in moths and beetles, nymphs in grasshoppers and bugs. This page does not invent a host plant that no source named.

In crisis

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.

Lycaena helle 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 Lycaena helle, Wikidata item Q883053. 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.