Silver-studded blue
The silver-studded blue is a small butterfly. The males are deep royal blue with a black border and a fluffy white fringe. Both males and females have tiny shiny silver spots on their back wings, like little studs.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Ants look after it, from the egg all the way until it becomes a butterfly. The caterpillars even live in the ants' nests.
It is a real stay-at-home. Most of them fly less than 20 metres in a day.
The females are brown, not blue, but they have the silver spots too.
The caterpillar is green with a dark stripe and grows to about 1,3 cm long.
In Britain it has become rare, because many of its heaths have disappeared.
Most asked questions about Silver-studded blue
?Why is it called the silver-studded blue?
Because of the small shiny silver spots on its back wings.
?Where does the silver-studded blue live?
On heaths, moors and grassland in Europe and across Asia.
?Why do ants help the silver-studded blue?
The ants protect the eggs, caterpillars and pupae, and the caterpillars live safely in their nests.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Plebejus argus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Silver-studded blue (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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