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1969
Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society
199
A NOTE ON HELICONIUS ANTIOCHUS SALVINII (NYMPHALIDAE)
John H. Masters1 P.O. Box 7511, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Seitz (1924) observed: "I doubt if any species of Heliconius is really scarce. Often I have observed in certain localities of South America certain Heliconiinae to be rather scarce but I invariably found later on, that the species considered so rare would at some more distant place, at some other time or in a certain limited locality, suddenly appear in great numbers, proving thereby that it is only at the limits of its range of distribution or outside of their normal time of appearance that they become really scarce/' These words were prophetic in the case of Heliconius antiochus salvinii Dewitz (1877), heretofore known only from a small number of specimens and only from a restricted locality on the border between Venezuela and British Guiana (Emsley, 1965).
On a collecting expedition to El Pao, Bolivar, Venezuela, during March 1965, I was surprised not only at encountering H. a. salvinii, but at finding it the dominant forest Heliconius. El Pao has an elevation of 560 meters and is located in a Guiana Highland area of rather heavy selva, or lowland tropical forest. This butterfly was seen gliding ten to fifteen feet above the ground across open spots on wooded trails near El Pao. Senor Albert Gadou, who lived for several years at El Pao, informed me that H. a. salvinii flew the year around and was always the commonest Heliconius there. Gadou has found salvinii at several other localities near El Pao and Senor Yury Budaracy found it abundantly at El Dorado, Bolivar, Venezuela. Apparently salvinii does not occur between El Pao and El Dorado, nor in the Gran Sabana region south of El Pao. No other form of Heliconius antiochus has been found sympatric with salvinii. This supports the present placement of salvinii as a subspecies of antiochus rather than assigning it to a species status or dismissing it as a polychromatic form.
Heliconius a. salvinii (figure 1), which has not previously been figured, is very distinct and is readily distinguished by the broad yellow bar on the hindwings.
My search of the major institutional collections has uncovered but seven specimens of salvinii in the United States and a few in England— they are as follows:
Venezuela: Rio Suapure, Bolivar, Venezuela. 4 $ 's 1 $, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; several specimens, British Museum of Natural History, Tring. All part of a
1 Research Associate, section of insects and spiders, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.
200 Masters: Rediscovered Heliconius Vol. 23, no. 3
Fig. 1. Heliconius antiochus salvinii Dewitz, El Pao, Bolivar, Venezuela, March, 1965, J. H. Masters collector. A upperside; B. underside.
series collected by S. Klages in 1899 and 1900. "Venezuela—10 miles from border with Guyana." Specimen in the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington.
Guyana: Kartabo, Guyana. 2 S's, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. One collected by S. Williams in 1927, the second one probably from the same source. Matope, Cuyuni River, Guyana. Specimen in the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington.
Examples of H. antiochus salvinii from El Pao have been placed in the collections at Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; American Museum of Natural History, New York; Philadelphia Academy of Science; and the United States National Museum, Washington.
I am indebted to Dr. John R. G. Turner of the University of York, Heslington, England for providing me with information on Venezuelan
1969
Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society
201
Heliconius in British collections; and to the late Dr. Richard M. Fox of Carnegie Museum and Dr. Michael G. Emsley of the Philadelphia Academy of Science for reading and commenting on my manuscript.
Literature Cited
Dewitz, H., 1877. Neue Schmetterlinge des Berliner Museums. Mitt. Miinchener
Ent Verh., 1: 85-91. Emsley, M. G., 1965. Speciation in Heliconius (Lep., Nymphalidae): morphology
and geographic distribution. Zoologica, 50: 191-254. Settz, A., 1924. The Macrolepidoptera of the World, Vol. 5, The American Rho-
palocera. Alfred Kernen, Stuttgart.
AN ANOMALOUS FORELEG IN A MALE OF DODONIDIA HELMSII (SATYRIDAE)
Lee D. Miller The Allyn Foundation, 222 West Adams Building, Chicago, Illinois
Individuals with one structure or another abnormally developed are well known in many organisms. A few of these aberrations are genetic, such as the "aristopedia" mutant of Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen) in which the antenna is modified into an imperfect leg-like structure through the action of a single gene. Other abnormalities are not genetic, or at least the trait is not transmitted to the offspring, if any; these aberrations are "birth defects" resulting in teratological specimens.
Teratology frequently has been noted in the Lepidoptera, with most examples involving extra wings, deformed wings, or aberrant venation. Most frequently the latter involves the atypical placement of one or more veins, the anastomosis of ordinarily separate veins, or the bifurcation of usually undivided veins as shown by Warren (1936). I encountered several such minor aberrant wing venations in the examination of hundreds of Satyridae for a higher classification study, so such anomalies are not rare. Aberrant genitalic structures, such as those reported for a female of Pellicia dimidiata Herrich-S chaffer by Monroe and Miller (1967), are less frequently encountered, probably because relatively few specimens are dissected.
The reduced forelegs of both sexes of the Nymphaloidea are of great importance in the classification of these butterflies, and occasionally one will encounter some bizarre configurations of these structures. One very unusual foreleg was noted in the only male I had of the New Zealand satyrid Dodonidia helmsii Butler, a butterfly which closely resembles no other species but which logically should be allied to the New Zealand