List of butterflies of Russia

This is a list of butterflies of Russia. About 540 species are known from Russia. The butterflies (mostly diurnal) and moths (mostly nocturnal) together make up the taxonomic order Lepidoptera.

Location of Russia

The history of lepidopterology in Russia is connected with the organization of the first Russian museum The Kunstkamera established by Peter the Great in 1714. In 1717, he purchased the collection of Albert Seba, a merchant from Amsterdam, for the new museum. In 1832 the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was separated as a distinct institution which in 1931 became the Zoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1991 — Russian Academy of Sciences).

In 1859, the then director of the Zoological Museum, Johann Friedrich von Brandt was one of the founders of the Russian Entomological Society in 1859 and in St. Petersburg . Other founders were Karl Ernst von Baer, Ya. A. Kushakevich, Colonel Alexander Karlovich Manderstern, Alexander von Middendorff and Colonel of General Staff Victor Ivanovitsch Motschulsky. Another society founder was Ferdinand Morawitz. Eduard Brandt and Ferdinand Morawitz. Also important was the Moscow Society of Naturalists and increasingly the Russian Academy of Sciences and The Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From the mid-nineteenth century the main zoogeographic focus was on the Caucasus, Siberia and the Russian Far East. At the end of the nineteenth century the German entomologist Otto Staudinger financed collectors in the Far East of Russia. In the early twentieth century the results of all these endeavours were summarised in Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde edited by Adalbert Seitz.

From 1925 lepidopterology was organised by The Academy of Sciences of the USSR and lists titled USSR or SSR. In 1991 The Academy of Sciences of the USSR became once again the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Notable Russian lepidopterists include Peter Simon Pallas, Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, Édouard Ménétries, Johann von Böber, Hugo Theodor Christoph, Alexander Yakhontov, Alexander von Nordmann, Vasily Evgrafovich Yakovlev, Victor Motschulsky, Sergei Alphéraky, Otto Vasilievich Bremer, Grigory Grum-Grshimailo, Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko, Nicholas Mikhailovich, Nikolay Grigoryevich Erschoff, Nikolai Yakovlevich Kuznetsov, Grigory Bey-Bienko and Yuri Korshunov.

Butterflies of Russia