HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – Charles Lee Remington, a leading biologist in the study of butterflies and moths, has died in Hamden.

He was 85.

Remington, who taught at Yale University for more than four decades, serving most recently as emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, died May 31, his wife, Ellen Mahoney, told The Associated Press Sunday.

In his evolutionary research, he suggested that there were geographic regions where species tended to hybridize. He said species of all different types of plants, insects and mammals might hybridize with close relatives.

The idea was soon considered discredited, but has been recently revived.

“His flair was a willingness and ability to use his encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world to counsel students with interests as disparate as butterfly genetics, goat behavior, cave ecology, legal solutions to environmental issues, plant pollination, insect vision and the locomotor physiology of monkeys,” Lawrence F. Gall of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History said in a statement posted on the university’s Web site.

As curator at the Peabody museum, Remington is credited with establishing a significant insect collection. It is known for its large numbers of specimens and rare holdings such as the world’s largest collection of insects that are part male and part female, known as gynandromorphs.

Remington also established the first cicada preserve in the United States, near Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden.

During his military service in World War II, Remington served as a medical entomologist in the Pacific, researching afflictions such as insect-borne epidemics and centipede bites on servicemen in the Philippines.

In addition to his wife, Remington is survived by three children and three grandchildren.