Polygonia (from Greek πολύς - polys, "many"πολύς, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus and γωνία - gōnia, "angle"γωνία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus) is a genus of butterflies with a conspicuous white mark on the underside of each hindwing, hence the common name comma. They also have conspicuous angular notches on the outer edges of their forewings, hence the other common name anglewing butterflies. The related genus Nymphalis also includes some anglewing species; Polygonia is sometimes classified as a subgenus of Nymphalis."Nymphalis Kluk, 1780" at Markku Savela's Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms

Many members of Polygonia hibernate as adults.Scott, J. A. (1999). Hibernal diapause of North American Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea. Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera 18(3):171-200. Species include:Polygonia, Tree of LifeWahlberg, N. et al. (2009). Timing major conflict between mitochondrial and nuclear genes in species relationships of Polygonia butterflies (Nymphalidae: Nymphalini). BMC Evolutionary Biology 9:92. Polygonia c-album (Linnaeus, 1758) – comma Polygonia c-aureum (Linnaeus, 1758) – Asian comma Polygonia comma (Harris, 1842) – eastern comma Polygonia egea (Cramer, 1775) – southern comma Polygonia faunus (Edwards, 1862) – Faunus anglewing, Faunus comma, green comma Polygonia g-argenteum Doubleday & Hewitson, 1846 – Mexican anglewing Polygonia gigantea (Leech, 1883) – giant comma Polygonia gracilis (Grote & Robinson, 1867) – hoary comma Polygonia haroldii Dewitz, 1877 – spotless anglewing Polygonia interposita (Staudinger, 1881) Polygonia interrogationis (Fabricius, 1798) – question mark Polygonia oreas (Edwards, 1869) – oreas anglewing, oreas comma, sylvan anglewing Polygonia progne (Cramer, 1775) – grey comma, gray comma Polygonia satyrus (Edwards, 1869) – satyr anglewing, satyr comma Polygonia undina (Grum-Grshimailo, 1890) Polygonia zephyrus (Edwards, 1870) – zephyr comma

Notes

References

Family Nymphalidae. Butterflies of Canada. Genus Nymphalis. Zdenek Fric.