CANBERRA, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientists have discovered the first new species of butterfly native to the country in almost a decade.
The cyprotides maculosus -- or spotted trident-blue butterfly -- is endemic to high-altitude areas in and around the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
Distinguishable by the large spots on its wings, the butterfly was first photographed by a citizen scientist in 2017 but had not been officially identified until now.
It was named by Michael Braby, a biologist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) National Insect Collection, who said the discovery was significant.
"To turn up something completely new, that's quite rare. That doesn't happen too often," he was quoted as saying by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Tuesday.
"The last one was eight years ago in 2015, so to have it on our doorstep of the ACT -- just 50 km from Canberra -- is really quite remarkable."
After the new species of butterfly was photographed in 2017, a colleague of Braby's collected a live specimen at Kosciuszko National Park in 2019.
In 2020 and 2021, the biologist found the butterflies' breeding habitat in subalpine frost hollows -- natural grassy plains in the mountains -- where they eat and lay eggs on the hakea microcarpa, a flowering shrub endemic to the east coast.
During experiments, Braby found that caterpillars would eat plants related to the hakea microcarpa but that females would only lay eggs on the specific plant.
"They live in these very specialized grassy frost hollows around the southern Namadgi and in the adjacent Kosciuszko National Park, and the altitude varies from about 1,100 meters up to 1,500 meters," Braby said.
"It's not the sort of the place you'd really go to look for butterflies." ■