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Post by bobw on Feb 13, 2015 12:22:04 GMT
I didn't quite know where to put this but I recently tried to get in to the site www.guianensis.fr and it no longer seems to be available.
Does anybody know what has happened to it or more importantly, if it's likely to be back up?
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 13, 2015 11:50:26 GMT
It does seem strange... he's a very experienced seller so he must know what a female looks like and I'm sure he'd make a big deal of it if it was.
It's already gone to much more than two males are worth so obviously someone's taking a punt.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 12, 2015 14:46:29 GMT
If you read the full description you will see "(*) About shown pictures : The pictures give you indication of the insect and it is very possible to recieve another specimen of the same species. So minor differences in color or shape may always occur."
Therefore it's not advisable to bid without asking the seller first whether the pictured specimens are definitely the ones being sold. Otherwise it's probable that two males would be sent out.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 12, 2015 11:25:47 GMT
The abdomen certainly looks like a female but it's not the right angle to be sure that there are no claspers.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 10, 2015 15:41:27 GMT
It is now considered very bad practice to describe a species from a single specimen. It was a different story 100+ years ago when many species were still unknown; there aren't so many undescribed ones now. Something described from a single specimen (or even a few) could easily be an aberrant form of another species so the bigger the series the better.
Describing a subspecies from very few specimens is even worse as many individuals can fall within the range of variation of another subspecies. Subspecies should only be described from long series; when studying long series from different localities for the Colias book it became apparent that many described subspecies were merely synonyms. It's easy to see differences in short series; we looked at series of 50+ specimens from many different localities and it then became apparent that the range of variation was pretty much the same.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 5, 2015 13:42:36 GMT
The specimen above is one of the many bred by Les Young back in the 80s. This was briefly discussed on the Insectnet forum. I've copied my post there below:
Some of the English collectors on here may recall that back in the 80s and maybe early 90s there was a collector called Les Young (long since deceased) who selectively reared P. icarus for many years and produced extreme "radiata" specimens at will. He started off by rearing from a wild-caught female with slightly enlarged spots and reared three generations of several hundred specimens per year. From each brood he selected the most extreme forms for breeding and after only about six generations produced "radiata" specimens that would put the ones shown here to shame; the stock also threw out other types of extreme aberration. He had to do an outcross fairly regularly to strengthen the stock but it only took a generation or two to get the aberrations back.
I used to have quite a few of his specimens but disposed of them some time ago, however he gave quite a few away to acquaintances so I'm sure there must be people out there who still have some of his specimens - he reared thousands of them. His set up to do such intensive breeding of a single species was very impressive.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Feb 1, 2015 23:28:06 GMT
Colias ponteni has been searched for decades and is not a tropical species like the others (tropical species can easily hide themselves in hard-to-penetrate forests or in the canopy. I personnaly doubt C. ponteni has been overlooked. Colias ponteni has not been seen since 1852 but the big problem is that nobody knows where it was collected. On both occasions it was collected the data is considered to be wrong. It's generally considered that it must have come from Tierra del Fuego but there have been several expeditions down that way to look for it, all without success. One Japanese collector was so obsessed with it he went there three times looking for it!
There's no proof that it's extinct but it's still there I would have thought somebody would have found it by now. It's so distinctive it could hardly have been overlooked.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Jan 9, 2015 17:32:10 GMT
If you cannot determine an apollo butterfly from a locality without the data, it might suggest, that the population from that area, is not a good subspecies ?. Absolutely! No species has been split as mush as apollo. There are a huge number of described "subspecies", many of which were only made to get the author's name in print or to make money from selling paratypes. Only a handful of European ones would be called subspecies in groups that are less "overstudied". If Vanessa cardui was a Parnassius it would probably have 50 subspecies in Europe!
Bob
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Post by bobw on Jan 4, 2015 17:08:28 GMT
Any chequered skipper would do, I went to Loch Arkaig about 8 years ago but saw nothing, it is one of the few British butterflies I have yet to see. Dunc
When I went to Scotland many years ago looking for C. palaemon I didn't find Loch Arkaig to be very good at all - 2 days with one possible sighting. Then I tried Spean Bridge and saw plenty along the roadside; if you go again I suggest you try there.
I also picked up quite a few ticks there.
Bob
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Post by bobw on Dec 28, 2014 17:50:24 GMT
Several people have suggested I join this forum so here I am! Many of you will know me from the Insectnet forum and personal correspondence. My name is Bob Worthy from Surrey, England; I'm 60 years old and have been collecting Lepidoptera for 55 of them. I've collected many groups over the years: British butterflies, Birdwings, Achillides, Neotopical Papilionidae, Neotropical Preponini and Anaeini, Morphidae etc., but most of you will know me for my work on Colias; I've collected and studied these for 25 years and co-authored a nomenclatural catalogue on the Old World species a couple of years ago; I'm also currently actively studying the Neotropical Castniidae.
I do a fair amount of work at the Natural History Museum in London (it will be a lot more after my recent retirement) and have made quite a lot of collecting trips over the last 25 years to various parts of Europe, Central Asia, Russia and North and South America. I have also reared several hundred species of European butterflies and quite a lot of Saturniids; I've currently got a bit of a passion for Catocala and have ova of a dozen species at the moment.
I look forward to contributing to the forum.
Bob
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