What the Heck is this ?.....

[Lawrence F. Gall]

Hello Clay, et al.,

>However, once I returned home, downloaded the pics and started looking
>at the books, (Scott, Opler and Glassberg) it got confusing.  The only 

>Crescents that show very dark, contrasty upper hindwing patterns all 
>had similarly dark and contrasty forewings.   This guy has lots of 
>light areas starting from about 1/3 of the way out the forewing, 
>similar to many of the "orange" forms of PC.
>
>Opinions, anyone?

I'm also at home, without any books other than Glassberg (1993),
but my first impression is that you have a highly aberrant
Pearl Crescent.  The list's opinion may settle onto a different
determination before next week, but in any event, I'll take
your fine color JPEGs of the beast and look at some specimen
material at the Peabody on Wednesday (next time in there).
Although I haven't personally seen strongly albinic/aberrant
Pearl Crescents, I have witnessed this sort of thing in Silvery
Checkerspots, Chlosyne nycteis, in Connecticut (if you have
access to J. Lepid. Soc. take a look at vol. 37, pp. 85-86 for
1983, there's a short article on this by me and Dale Schweitzer;
the specimens are at Peabody if you'd like to see them).
Best regards, Larry

..................................................................
Lawrence F. Gall, Ph.D.            e-mail: lawrence.gall at yale.edu :
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