Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site

Nymphalidae

With about 6000 species worldwide, the morphological diversity within the brushfoots is immense. There have been decades of debates about how to classify the group and what traits are important and useful. For our purposes, the uniting characteristic of the brushfoots is the reduction of the front pair of legs into small, brush-like appendages that serve no real function, rather like the human appendix or tailbone.