The text below is grayed out because it is not intended to be read. It is a necessarily imperfect OCR of the original and is only used by a search engine.
|
|
||||
|
170
|
Heitzman: Confused Thorybes
|
Vol.18: rio.3
|
||
|
|
||||
|
this moth could even fool a skipper into thinking it was one of its own. I gave up collecting butterflies for a moment and decided to watch the outcome of this little drama. The male pylades dipped lower until the moth, startled, skipped a dozen yards away and settled again among the dead leaves. Right behind came pylades and the same thing transpired a second time. The skipper began the nuptial ritual, dipping lower and lower until the moth was startled into flying away to a new location. I followed a few steps behind and witnessed the same procedure a total of eleven times before the tormented little moth finally crawled deep into a clump of dried grass and the disgruntled skipper after a few circles about the grass clump went off in search of a less reluctant recipient of his charms. I watched very carefully the rest of the day to see if this phenomena would occur again and was twice rewarded. On one occasion a series of five passes was made at a cuspidea and the other time a token pass was made at another cuspidea. In both of these cases the skipper gave up while the moths were still resting in the open. All three of the moths were collected and provd to be males in quite fresh condition. I did not collect the skippers and the possibility exists that the same individual was involved in each instance although they occured at widely separated points in the woods.
Richard Heitzman, 3112 Harris Avenue., Independence, Mo., U. S. A.
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
COMMENT ON AE'S LARVAE OF INTERSPECIFIC HYBIRDS IN BLACK SWALLOWTAILS IN JAPAN
In his 1963 paper on Papilio hybrids (Journ. lepid. soc. 17: 163-169) Dr. Ae refers to differences in the stripes on the 4th, 5th, and 6th abdominal somites of the various larvae. In my experience these stripes vary considerably between larvae of the same species and can in no way be taken as an indication of species.
In the larva of the African Papilio demodocus Esp., with which I am now most familar, the stripes appear to vary with the degree of light experienced by the larva. I have found larvae feeding on orange trees growing in full sunshine with these stripes completely obsolete. Larvae reared in the dark have the stripes continuous, heavy, and blackish in colour, and a complete cline can be made from unstriped to heavily striped larvae and with the colour of the stripe varying from almost blackish to a pale lavender-brown.
D. G. Sevastopulo, P. O. Box 5026, Mombasa, KENYA
|
||||
|
|
||||