Subfamily Satyrinae:
The Satyrinae is the biggest subfamily in the Nymphalidae. It includes around 2600 species of worldwide distribution.
The Satyrinae is a very successful group of butterflies, they inhabit all continents, remote islands, tropical forests, cold places in high latitudes and even live in high elevation habitats in mountain chains. Most of Satyrinae feed on monocotyledoneous plants, mainly from the family of grasses, Poaceae, although interesting enough, some species in the genus Euptychia depart from this rule by feeding on lower plants like Selaginella (fam. Selaginellaceae), even some Euptychia species go as far as feeding on mosses (division Bryophyta) as larvae. No other group of butterfly has ever been found to feed on such lower plants.
Classification:
The current classification of Satyrinae follows mainly Miller's 1968 publication. Although Lamas et al.'s 2004 Catalog of names only treated Neotropical butterflies, it has provided some sort of order but much work is still needed.
The bulk of species of Satyrinae are included in two subtribes, Euptychiina and Pronophilina, which are distributed only in the new world, presenting a highest diversity in the Neotropics, particularly South America.
- Natural History on Satyrinae (literature).
This is a very incomplete list of literature on natural history of satyrine butterflies. It is the result of a very arbitrary selection of papers that include information about hostplants, morphology of immatures stages, behaviour and ecology.
