Morant’s blue – What the females looked like remains uncertain

Three male specimens remain

Walter Morant, probably a dedicated collector and observer of nature in what was then the British colony of Natal in southern Africa, was among the early members of the Natural History Association of Natal, founded in 1868. There he gave lectures and exhibited insects—with a particular interest in South Africa’s butterfly fauna.

On 21 September 1870, Morant discovered two butterflies unknown to him and sent them to the lepidopterist Roland Trimen. The latter, then curator at the South African Museum, described the species together with Henry James Bowker in 1887 in the monograph South African Butterflies as Lycaena hypopolia. In honour of its discoverer, it was given the name Morant’s blue.

The species is documented only by three male specimens. Two complete individuals go back to Morant; a third, incompletely preserved specimen, missing one leg, was found in 1879 by the ornithologist Thomas Ayres. Today, the two complete specimens are housed in the Natural History Museum in London, while the third is kept at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town.

Reports of a possible female specimen, said to have been collected by C. W. Morrison near Estcourt in today’s KwaZulu-Natal province, have so far not been confirmed. To this day, only three male specimens are known.

The IUCN has listed Morant’s blue as extinct since 1994. The species had already been classified as extinct by Henning and Henning in 1989 in the South Africa Red Data Book – Butterflies.

Morant’s blue – fact sheet

alternative names	Lost nimble blue, Morant-se-bloutjie, Morant-bloutjie, Verlore Ratsbloutjie
scientific names	Lepidochrysops hypopolia, Lycaena hypopolia, Cupido hypopolia, Neochrysops hypopolia
original range	South Africa
time of extinction	around 1879
causes of extinction	unclear, possibly habitat loss
IUCN status	extinct

Range: largely unknown

Very little is known about the range of Morant’s blue. The few clues come exclusively from the localities where the three known specimens were found. The butterflies were discovered in South African grassland, namely at Blue Bank near Ladysmith in today’s province of KwaZulu-Natal and in the Potchefstroom area in the North West Province—two regions lying several hundred kilometres apart. It is therefore unclear whether Morant’s blue had a continuous range or occurred in isolated populations.

In his master’s thesis at Stellenbosch University, the entomologist Jonathan Bradford Ball (2006) makes this assumption more specific and names the KwaZulu-Natal Highland Thornveld and the Carletonville Dolomite Grassland as possible habitats—both grassland types within the South African grassland biome. These habitats are characterised by open vegetation and harbour a wide variety of specialised insect species.

The known records date from 1870 (Morant) and 1879 (Ayres), but more precise localities were not recorded. If the alleged finding of a female near Estcourt were to be confirmed, this would expand the presumed range within KwaZulu-Natal without fundamentally changing the overall picture. Rather, it would suggest that Morant’s blue was somewhat more widespread in the region’s grasslands than the few known records currently indicate. The actual range of Morant’s blue therefore remains largely unclear to this day.

Practically nothing is known about the way of life of Morant’s blue. There is no information on the development of the caterpillars or on possible host plants. All known records come from the month of September, which could indicate a short flight period. In addition, the species was probably extremely local in distribution, which is likely to have increased its vulnerability to environmental changes even further.

What did Morant’s blue look like?

The upper sides of the wings of Morant’s blue shimmered in a dull, pale violet-blue tone—noticeably less bright than in many other blues. Along the wing margins ran a narrow, dark border. A small black spot on the hindwing, surrounded by a pale yellow crescent, was particularly striking. Unlike some related species, Morant’s blue had no “tail” on the hindwing.

The underside was greyish white and appeared slightly “frosted”. It showed several rows of small spots and crescent-shaped markings in ochre-yellow and whitish tones. Overall, however, these patterns were rather faint and gave the butterfly a subdued appearance. With a wingspan of about four centimetres (“1 inch 6–7 lines” in Trimen & Bowker 1887), Morant’s blue was medium-sized for a member of the blues (Lycaenidae).

Nothing is known about the female specimens. We do know, however, that many male blues are blue on the upper sides of the wings—hence the name. The females, by contrast, often have a different wing colour, not infrequently brownish. This phenomenon of different colouration in the two sexes is called sexual dichroism.

Is Morant’s blue actually just a Highveld blue?

It has repeatedly been discussed whether Morant’s blue was merely a form of the Highveld blue (Lepidochrysops praeterita), possibly chemically altered during preparation. In that case, the two would not be distinct species but identical.

The starting point for this idea lies in finds from the late 1950s: the entomologist David Swanepoel specifically searched for Morant’s blue and eventually discovered a large blue near Carletonville. He sent the specimens to the British Museum in London, where it was determined that they did not exactly match the known specimens collected by Morant or Ayres. On this basis, Swanepoel decided to describe the butterflies in 1962 as a new species—the Highveld blue.

Later finds near Potchefstroom—that is, in a region where Morant’s blue was also recorded—strengthened the suspicion that they might actually be the same species. Some authors also argued that the conspicuously pale underside of Morant’s blue is not natural, but may instead have been caused by the chemical preparation of the historical specimens. The clearly paler grey underside of L. hypopolia is regarded as the key distinguishing feature. However, about 80 years lie between the finds of the two forms—a period hardly sufficient for such differences to arise naturally, which lends further support to the hypothesis of chemical alteration.

More likely, however, is that the Highveld blue is closely related to Morant’s blue and may represent its sister species. Ball (2006) points out that several features speak against a shared identity: the undersides of Morant’s blue are distinctly paler, the upper sides are not bleached, and the outer margins of the forewings are more strongly convex in the males. There are therefore both colour and morphological differences between the two species that cannot be explained by preparation alone.

Even in the original description, Trimen and Bowker noted that Morant’s blue most closely resembles the Brenton blue (Orachrysops niobe, described in 1858) and the King blue (Lepidochrysops tantalus, described in 1887). However, both species are smaller and darker on the underside.

The Brenton blue itself is now considered possibly extinct: At one of its two known localities, in Nature’s Valley, the species has already disappeared, and it may also have died out by now in the Brenton Blue Butterfly Reserve near Knysna.

Its main threats are considered to be unpredictable events such as large wildfires and prolonged droughts—which particularly affect the host plants—as well as the loss of genetic diversity and climate change. A devastating fire near Knysna in 2017 may have caused the species’ final disappearance. However, there is still hope that larvae may have survived in the soil.

Why did Morant’s blue become extinct?

The exact causes of Morant’s blue’s extinction are unknown. At the time of its discovery in 1870, the species must already have been extremely rare—after the last record in 1879, no further specimen could be found.

The fact that other blues have also gone extinct shows how vulnerable these butterflies can be. A well-known example is the Xerces blue from San Francisco, which disappeared in the 1940s. As urbanisation progressed, its habitat was completely destroyed, and with it its host plant was lost—a crucial prerequisite for the development of its caterpillars. The same was probably true of the Mauritius snout butterfly, which became extinct as early as 1865.

Whether comparable processes also led to the disappearance of Morant’s blue can no longer be determined with certainty today. What is certain, however, is that the vegetation in the former range has changed significantly since the 1870s—a circumstance also highlighted by the IUCN. Against the backdrop of the intensive use of natural resources in South Africa, it seems plausible that habitat changes may have played a role.

Excursus: Colonisation and landscape change in South Africa

With the founding of the first permanent European settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, a profound transformation of the South African landscape began. Over the following centuries, European settlers—first under Dutch, later under British rule—expanded ever further into the interior. For agriculture, livestock farming, and settlements, forests were cleared, grasslands converted, and wild animals heavily hunted.

These interventions had far-reaching ecological consequences. Overgrazing by introduced livestock, large-scale land use, and monocultures led in many places to soil erosion and the degradation of entire ecosystems. Numerous animal species disappeared from large parts of their range as early as the 18th and 19th centuries or were completely exterminated. Among the best-known examples are the bluebuck († around 1800), the quagga († 1883), and the Cape lion, which disappeared in the 19th century. Elephants, too, were heavily pushed back in southern Africa and locally exterminated.

The first protective measures did not arise primarily from conservation concerns, but from economic interests. Early protected areas served to secure game stocks for hunting, preserve important water catchment areas, or protect valuable timber resources. Nevertheless, they mark the beginning of organised conservation efforts.

An initial shift in thinking began in the mid-19th century: in 1846, the Cape Colony enacted a law to protect soils from erosion. This was followed by further regulations to protect vegetation with the Forest and Herbage Preservation Act of 1858. By 1914, several protected areas had been established in South Africa with a combined area of around 30,000 square kilometres—forming the basis of many of today’s national parks and reserves.

Against this background, it becomes clear that profound landscape changes were already taking place in the 19th century—precisely in the period when Morant’s blue was last recorded. Even if a direct connection has not been proven, such interventions may have contributed to the species’ disappearance.

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Sources

• Ball, J. B. (2006). Approaches towards a critical evaluation and update of the red list of South African Butterflies (Master’s thesis). Stellenbosch University. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1835
• Henning, S. F., & Henning, G. A. (1989). South Africa Red Data Book – Butterflies. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
• Henning, G. A., Terblanche, R. F., & Ball, J. B. (Eds.). (2009). South African Red Data Book: Butterflies (SANBI Biodiversity Series No. 13). South African National Biodiversity Institute.
• Lepidopterists’ Society of Africa. (n.d.). Genus Lepidochrysops Hedicke, 1923. Metamorphosis.
• Trimen, R., & Bowker, J. H. (1887). South African butterflies, Volume 2. London: Trubner.
• Cockburn, K .N. A. (2020). Lepidochrysops hypopolia. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020. e.T11537A168301541. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T11537A168301541.en