Species Information

Kingdom: Animalia
  Phylum: Arthropoda
    Class: Insecta
      Order: Lepidoptera
        Family: Lycaenidae
          Genus: Euphilotes
            Species: ellisii anasazi

New Mexico Desert Blue - Euphilotes ellisii anasazi

New Mexico Desert Blue

Image courtesy of Biota Information System of New Mexico

1381549

Species Extent (New Mexico)

Status

Global Rank: G2

State Rank: S1

Rank Metadata
State Rank: S1 Rank Changed: 02/10/2025
Rank Reviewed: N/A
Reason: <em>Euphilotes ellisi anasazi</em> also known as the Anasazi Desert Blue is endemic to arid shrublands in northwestern New Mexico. The population size and trend are unknown for this subspecies and determination will be crucial to ensure the long term survival of this taxa. This subspecies has rarely ever been observed with only six records known none of which are recent records. However, this subspecies is difficult to identify and it is unknown how much surveying is occurring in this area of New Mexico as much of its distribution lies within the Navajo reservation. Additionally, while much life history information is missing on this taxa, this butterfly has a variety of life history traits that put it at increased risk of extinction. The threats to this taxa have not been researched but the taxa has a wide variety of inferred threats. Many of which are threats to this taxas sole known host plant which is heavily negatively impacted by invasive species and wildfire. Cheatgrass has already invaded many parts of this subspecies habitat, choking out the host plant and increasing wildfire frequency and severity. This combination could lead to large declines in this very geographic limited subspecies. With no recent observations only a small portion of this population could remain in which case fire or invasive species could knock it out quite quickly. However, an upper bound of six locations is currently determined off all available location data. As a result, with no recent observations and plenty of threats as well as a small known geographic extent this subspecies is currently assessed as S1 in New Mexico. However, this butterfly is hard to identify and so if more information becomes available a reassessment should be done.
 
Ecological Factors
Specificity: Narrow. Specialist or community with key requirements common. Range Extent: 5000-20,000 square km (about 2000-8000 square miles)
Occurences: 6 - 20 Population Size: Unknown
Area of Occupancy: Using all known points an Area of Occupancy of 6km2 was calculated on GeoCat. Threat Summary: N/A

State Status:

Federal Status:

USFS Status:

BLM Status:

SWAP Status: SGCN

NMRP Strategy Status:

Observations in Natural Heritage New Mexico Database

Number of Subpopulations: 0

Number of Mapped Locations: 0

Number of Observations: 0


Species Related Publications

Show