A newly discovered butterfly species has been named in honor of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman tragically killed on a Charlotte light rail this past August.

The butterfly, officially named Celastrina iryna or “Iryna’s Azure,” lives across the southeastern coastal plain of the United States. It was described in September in The Taxonomic Report of the International Lepidoptera Survey by lepidopterist Harry Pavulaan, who said the name reflects the serenity and harmony her name signifies in Ukrainian culture.

The discovery concludes a mystery first documented in 1985 by South Carolina researcher Ronald Gatrelle, who collected early specimens from Aiken and Barnwell counties but never formally named them. After Gatrelle’s death, Pavulaan acquired his collection and launched a

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