Vanessa on the Canary Islands
John R. Grehan
jrg13 at psu.edu
Sun Dec 16 17:37:06 EST 2001
>About Vanessa vulcania (or V. indica vulcania, whatever)... Is it an endemic
> species of the Canary Islands? I don´t think so, i mean, it´s rather strange
> as other populations of this species only occur in eastern and southern
> Asia.
> It must have come in boats, etc.
>
>Eduardo Marabuto
>Portugal
I would suggest some caution on this one. One does not have to jump into
boats to take account of an affinity in Vanessa between the Canaries and
Asia of this kind. Biogeographic connections between Asia and western
Europe/Africa are commonplace so no traveling boats need even be considered
for Vanessa indica any more than suggesting someone picked up some plants
of Apollonias in India and dropped them of at the Canaries to become
another species, or that the Canaries plant genus Phyllis was is descended
from the genus Galopina originally picked up in South Africa. Further, in
taking account of the biogeography of Vanessa ('red admiral' alliance) the
genus has pattern of spatial replacement of most species throughout its
range which borders the Tethyan geosyncline and associated land between
North America and the Chatham Islands (New Zealand). The Canaries are an
integral part of a global biogeographic structure of Mesozoic origin).
John Grehan
John Grehan
Frost Entomological Museum
Pennsylvania State University
Department of Entomology
501 ASI Building
University Park, PA 16802. USA.
Phone: (814) 863-2865
Fax: (814) 865-3048
Frost Museum
http://www.ento.psu.edu/home/Frost/index.html
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