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Post by Adam Cotton on Jan 31, 2015 13:52:28 GMT
I am testing a hypothesis of the identity of this specimen: It appears to be a natural hybrid of Papilio castor mahadeva with either Papilio polytes romulus or P. prexaspes pitmani, which are the two similar sized species to mahadeva that occur in the same locality. To test the hypothesis I made a handpairing between Papilio castor kanlanpanus female and P. polytes romulus male yesterday. I used a Papilio castor female because she has much larger eggs than polytes. It will be interesting to see whether the resulting hybrids look anything like the wild specimen. I will let you know what happens. Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Jan 31, 2015 13:55:55 GMT
It seems this thread was accidentally deleted by Admin, so if anyone posted replies please post them again. I managed to resurrect the original post, and edited the day of making the hand pairing accordingly.
Adam.
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Post by wollastoni on Jan 31, 2015 13:58:43 GMT
Fascinating, Adam ! Let us know indeed !
I love natural hybrids ! There are some very rare Delias that are thought to be natural hybrids. I love our European ones too like Polyommatus 'cormion', Polyommatus 'polonus', P. machaon x P. hospiton.
PS : yes I mixed the button "edit" with the button "delete" this morning. Sorry about this. But there were no answer in the thread, don't worry.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Jan 31, 2015 18:49:53 GMT
Thinking about the hybrid, it is also possible that the other parent (one is obviously Papilio castor mahadeva) could be Papilio nephelus chaon, which is the commonest Papilio species at Khao Soi Dao. The hybrid is rather small, which was why I originally discounted the rather larger Papilio nephelus, but I did note that there are no really obvious polytes characters in the hybrid. It is worth making the cross to see what happens, as I have plenty of nephelus adults as well as castor at the moment. Again I will use Papilio castor female to mate with a male Papilio nephelus due to the larger egg size of castor. Meanwhile here is the underside of the hybrid: Unfortunately I don't have any mahadeva livestock at the moment, but the resulting hybrids shouldn't be too different using castor from NW Laos. Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 7, 2015 16:36:15 GMT
Finally, after several attempts at making this cross I have a female castor that has been laying fertile eggs, and today the first 10 larvae hatched from the eggs laid 5 days ago. The female has been laying eggs every day, so hopefully at least some of the larvae will survive. Hybrid larvae can have problems during development.
I will keep everyone informed how I get on with these, and once the larvae reach 5th instar I will post some photos, as smaller instars should be similar to either parent. Only in the green 5th instar do the larvae of these species really look very different.
Adam.
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Post by wollastoni on May 7, 2015 16:39:35 GMT
What a great news ! Congrats Adam !
Keep us posted !
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 16, 2015 17:05:48 GMT
The hybrid larvae just changed to 5th instar today, so here's a comparison with 5th instar larvae of both parents. Note that the parent larvae are both late 5th instar. I will post a photo of the hybrid late 5th instar in a few days. polytes: Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 16, 2015 17:08:12 GMT
polytes x castor
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 16, 2015 17:10:08 GMT
For some reason I couldn't put more than 1 photo in each post, so had to separate them. Here's the 5th instar larva of castor kanlanpanus
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Post by wollastoni on May 16, 2015 17:47:04 GMT
Adam, use the " smart attachment method" to put more than one photo per post. Your caterpillar indeed looks a perfect mix between the 2 parent models. Can't wait to see the imago !
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 22, 2015 21:24:49 GMT
Here's the mature larva:
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 29, 2015 20:12:52 GMT
Things are progressing nicely and I now have over 20 male and 9 female pupae. One additional female pupa was parasitised despite protection. I think this was a rare case of the Chalcid pupal parasitoid infecting the larva when it shed its skin between 4th and 5th instar, as I saw a parasitoid next to a larva that had just shed its skin to 5th instar.
The first male pupa is starting to colour up, and hopefully will emerge successfully tomorrow. I will post a photo after it has emerged.
Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 30, 2015 19:39:02 GMT
Here are the snapshot photos of the hybrid that emerged tonight. It seems obviously more like polytes than the wild specimen at the top of the thread, although there are similarities. 5 more males will emerge tomorrow and it will be useful to see how variable the specimens are. Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on May 30, 2015 19:40:06 GMT
Underside:
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Post by africaone on May 31, 2015 9:43:32 GMT
waow, nice experiment.
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