Icaricia icarioides ssp. pheres (Pheres Blue)

[Melanie]

Disappeared apparently sometime in the 1930s

archive.org/details/californiabutter00gart/page/24/mode/2up?q=sthenele

synonym: Plebejus icarioides pheres

[koeiyabe]

Please fix its English name from "Boisduval's blue" to "Pheres Blue."

[koeiyabe]

This subspecies has been extinct since the late 1940s/early 1950's as a result of urbanization of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Hovanitz (1968) noted his last detection was just prior to 1940 with no known collections since.

This extinct subspecies was known only from the sand dunes of western San Francisco and near Lobos Creek in the Presidio of San Francisco in San Francisco, California, USA (Emmel et al. 1998, NatureServe 2021).

This subspecies went extinct as a result of habitat loss due to urban development of the San Francisco Bay area (Doudoroff, 1935, Hafernik and Reinhard 1995, Connor et al. 2002). It's coastal dune habitat was lost due to development of beach properties.

explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.114911/Icaricia_icarioides_pheres

www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/icaricia_icarioides_pheres.htm