Subject: RE: New Blue Named/Nabokov Credited
From: "Johnson, Kurt" <[email-masked]>
To: "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 16:54:32 -0400

Christian Brevignon, a French lepidopterist who works often on Guadeloupe in
the Caribbean, has recently named a new Cyclargus species, C. oualiri, from
Guadeloupe and, in what is an usual/enjoyable departure from scientific
journal format, has framed beneath the ABSTRACT this quote from Nabokov:
"Few things indeed have I known in the way of emotion or appetite, ambition
or achievement, that could surpass in richness and strength the excitement
of entomological exploration (Vladmir Nabokov)".  The name oualiri is of
Indian derivation.

The paper is "Caracterisation d'une nouvelle espece antillaise du genre
Cyclargus Nabokov 1945 (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae, Polyommatinae,
Polyommatini)" published in Lambillionea Revue Internationale d'Entomologie,
Bruxelles, the publication of the Union de Entomologistes Belges.

This blue would have fascinated Nabokov.  Guadeloupe is home to a number of
"species", some named only recently, whose taxonomic status and rank, in
relation to mainland populations (on one hand) and more farflung elements of
the Caribbean region (the latter often considered subspecies) (on the other
hand) is somewhat puzzling and difficult to deal with using binomial
nomenclature.   Such Guadeloupean elements are very distinctive but their
status regarding the evolutionary tree will always be a bit of a "tangle"
because of the more proximal offshore location Guadeloupe..    Brevignon has
discovered, and named, a number of these previously unknown butterflies--
some in various genera of the Hairstreaks, a sister group of Nabokov's
blues.   It was kind of him to remember Nabokov and frame this quotation so
prominently in the publication.   His introduction describes Nabokov's
seminal work on Cyclargus as well.

Kurt Johnson