Harry LeGrand and Tom Howard painstakeingly work at updating and keeping butterfly distribution records of the Carolinas in a downloadable PDF form. (An on-line version will be available in a few weeks). The approximation was of great help to Barry and I last season as we traveled three times into the “Tar Heel State”. This guide, along with help from Harry and others helped us immensely on our quest for target butterflies. It contains wonderful details showing species diversity and trends from the mountians to the piedmont to the coastal plain. Harry has posted the announcment on the Carolina Leps website, part of which is replicated here:
Tom Howard and I are pleased to announce that the latest version (23rd) of the *Butterflies of North Carolina*, is now completed. You can see it or download it at: http://nature123.net/biodiversity.php The 23rd is the first of the three Approximations on the website. Note that the Dragonflies and Damselflies PDF and the Mammals PDF are those from early in 2015 and have not yet been updated. (I am editing the dragonfly/damselfly PDF now and it will be available in a few weeks.) A number of checklists are also available for downloading on this webpage. The 23rd approximation contains all of the observations entered during 2015 by folks on the carolinaleps listserve, as well as all data entered on eButterfly and on the State Parks' NRID database. Though no new species were found in NC in 2015, one species was formally described -- Crystal Skipper (*Atrytonopsis quinteri*) -- and a number of other species had notable range extensions, such as King's Hairstreak. ...