A strange Papilio ? Aberration ? Fake ?

[wollastoni]

A Philippine dealer showed me this :





I would be happy to have Adam's and other members' opinion about it.
Real one or fake ?

[terry2014]

Oliver, You asked the question real or fake. It must be real but how it was achieved is the question, presumably in a butterfly house?
An amazing specimen.Thank you for showing it. Terry

[timmsyrj]

WOW!! I would think an EXTREME Abb rather than line bred, other, less extreme specimens would be around from previous generations along the road to producing this.
Could have been produced by injection, which is an ever growing process of producing strange Abb's, what was the asking price?

Rich

[nomad]

There are some amazing red Aberrations of O. goliath males. I have always been rather skeptical about those, several have been named and are in the new Birdwing book, so  I guess they are indeed genuine. It does seems strange how ' a red colour' can turn up in green and gold butterflies but it does apparently happen. As for the papilio, something does not seem quite right about the specimen shown!! Perhaps our Papilio specialist Adam would like to comment. If I had to make a decision I would say it is a fake.       

[deliasfanatic]

Much will be answered if multiple specimens begin to appear!

[timmsyrj]

Adam has been breeding some very white memnon female forms through line breeding, but not seen anything before this with rumanzovia.

Please take a photo of it with the asking price at the next Juvisy show.!!! 

Rich

[wollastoni]

Thanks for your comments.

I also think it is Papilio memnon and I think it is not a painted specimen but one that hatched like this.
Then is it due to selective breeding or to a chemical method, I have no idea.

Impressive specimen if not faked.

[Deleted]

I agree about it being memnon, it would be interesting to know where it originated from.

[timmsyrj]

Only rumanzovia has large areas of red on hindwing verso, I have seen extreme ABB's with very extensive red on hindwings but never with so much white colouration, that and the more curved forewing makes me think this is rumanzovia, and rumanzovia is found commonly in the Philippines.

Rich

[Adam Cotton]

It seems real to me, the colour may be faked but I think it is probably not.

However, I suspect that this may actually either be a hybrid between memnon and rumanzovia or probably an extreme aberration of the latter. The wing shape doesn't look quite right for memnon, but of course there is a large amount of variation in individual wing shape. If it is rumanzovia or a hybrid of it that would certainly explain where the large amount of red could come from.

Rich is correct, I have been breeding white memnon, but have not been able to breed anything quite as white as this, although I have a strain which produces specimens with a virtually all white hindwing.

Jan mentioned memnon in Philippine butterfly farms. It is believed that the stock originated from Taiwan rather than Malaysia, and it has even been given a subspecies name, cremata Manguin, 1998, 'type locality' Boac, Philippines.

Aberrations of Papilio with extreme suffusion of red or purple do appear from time to time. Recently this emerged from one of my pupae of P. bianor:



However, in this specimen the red is present on both surfaces of the wings, as bianor naturally has red on the upperside too.

It does not surprise me that the red is only present on the underside of the memnon group specimen. I would actually be very surprised if it was also present on the upperside in this case, except at the base of the forewing. The absence of any red at the base of the forewing in this specimen does suggest it is more likely to be an aberration of rumanzovia than either pure memnon or a hybrid of memnon. There have been many aberrations of rumanzovia bred in Philippine farms before, so I think on reflection (along with the other evidence I mentioned) this specimen is likely to be one of those.

Adam.

[timmsyrj]

This is one of mine, nothing like the one above but with some line breeding, who knows.


This specimen came from a batch of ex-pupae, papered stock about 25 years ago from Chris Farrell, he had loads of boxes of papered specimens from an importer of pupae for butterfly houses and collectors, i can't recall his name but he lived in Halesowen, I also got loads of memnon heronus specimens and other specimens.
if these white forms where being reared 25 years ago then it's possible they have produced this colour form, I would have thought though that hundreds of intermediate forms would be around, as there are with the golden euphorion.


Rich

[Adam Cotton]

Oct 10, 2015 17:10:27 GMT timmsyrj said:

Only rumanzovia has large areas of red on hindwing verso, I have seen extreme ABB's with very extensive red on hindwings but never with the White colouration, that and the more curved forewing makes me think this is rumanzovia, and rumanzovia is found commonly in the Philippines.

Rich

It seems that Rich agrees with me, and I agree with him.

I also agree that the white colouration is very unusual, and I have also never seen rumanzovia with this all white background colour.

Even the whitest of my selectively bred memnon females are not anywhere near as white as this specimen in the whole forewing.

Adam.

[timmsyrj]

I would love to see the top side of that bianor specimen, the underside is stunning.

Rich

[Adam Cotton]

I will post a proper photo once it is off the setting board, but here is a quick glimpse of half (the other half was sticking up vertically). The upperside is even more stunning, with the blue patch as well as the enlarged red and purple submarginal spots. Unfortunately only the edge of the blue patch is visible in this photo, as it is covered by the forewing.




Adam.

[timmsyrj]

Have you set this lovely bianor yet Adam??

Rich