A paper published by Nick Grishin and Qian Cong sheds new light on the long time Carolina/Hermes Satyr confusion in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. His evidence indicates that the old Carolina Satyr across the southern US actually consists of two, sometimes sympatric, almost identical species,
Hermeuptychia sosybius and
H. intricata. While a satyrless gap exists across arid south Texas with our old RGV "Hermes" Satyr being a third species,
Hermeuptychia hermybius. Click
here to see the paper.
So here's some photos of the South Texas Satyr. In general it tends to have smaller, more variable ocelli than Carolina Satyr and the new Intricate Satyr of the southeastern US. The brown bands on the hindwing tend to be wavier also.
While this may not be the end of the story, it does seem to make a bit more sense than our previous ambiguous situation.
