Colias eurytheme/philodice

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

Over the weekend I ran across an old but fascinating paper that deals with
the topic of reproductive barriers between these two species.  
Silberglied,  R.E. and O.R. Taylor. 1978. Ultraviolet reflection and its
behavioral role in the courtship of the sulphur butterflies Colias eurytheme
and C. philodice. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 3:203-243.
The researchers studied courtship behavior in the field and in large outdoor
flight cages. They also conducted experiments to investigate the nature of
releasers of male courtship behavior and to determine the basis of mate
recognition by females.  Some of the interesting results were: 1) males rely
on visual cues to locate and identify females, 2) visible  [to our eyes]
color difference between the males of the species plays no role in mate
selection by females of either species.  The ultraviolet reflection
difference in the males [reflecting vs absorbing] is used as a mate
recognition signal by females of eurytheme and so functions as a component
of the system of isolating mechanisms between the species.  Females of both
species rely on chemical cues for conspecific mate recognition.  Etc etc.
Other than just reminding folks about this old but still useful information;
I am using this as an excuse to harp on the fact that people who think that
what they perceive as "minor differences" have no taxonomic value are
continuing to entirely miss the point that butterflies have different senses
than we do and they do not care if a human recognizes them as distinct
species or not.  Furthermore I have learned that an inexperienced [with a
particular genus] human will in some cases not even see visual differences
between species that are dramatically obvious to another human who does have
experience with said genus. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Norbert Kondla  P.Biol., RPBio.
Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management
845 Columbia Avenue, Castlegar, British Columbia V1N 1H3
Phone 250-365-8610
Mailto:Norbert.Kondla at gems3.gov.bc.ca       
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca


 
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