Nymphalidae Part 1 deals with Tribe Argynnini, genera Argynnis, Issoria, Brenthis, and Argyreus. The second edition is a full revision of the first edition with many additional pages, photos, new taxa and new taxonomic arrangements.
In the last fifteen years, since the first edition of this book was published, new findings about cryptic speciation and hybridization, availability of new tools for a better understanding of phylogenetic systematics and more material firom previously difficult areas, have more and more challenged the traditional and somehow well established species concepts. showing how much the speciation processes are variegate and complex and how little so far we know about them.
The Argynnis sensu lato species-group is particularly appropriate as a subject for better understanding speciation because of the extraordinary individual, geographical and ecological variations presented by most of its members. In addition this complex scenario, offered both by the north American Speyeria species and by the eastem Palearctic Fabriciana, attracts the interest of lepidopterists from all the world.
The systematic arrangement presented here is far from being the final arrangement of this fascinating butterfly group since many fundamental questions are still open. In this book the authors have tried to summarize the current state of art, substantially different from the one that was presented in 2003, with the hope that this will be the starting point for new, more comprehensive, investigations.