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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 17, 2015 18:08:03 GMT
and I personally think Tshikolovets is not far from the "truth"... if this word can apply to subspecies taxonomy. To a certain extent he is right, but Swedish machaon is very distinct from gorganus. Many other western European taxa may well be synonyms of gorganus though. |
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Post by jimfor on Apr 17, 2015 18:08:49 GMT
Hi Adam! This is very interesting and useful. I am also particularly interested in the last part of the list where you mention P.brevicauda ssp anticostiensis. Would you please tell me where it has been documented? Do you have the litterature about it? I have been working with all P.brevicauda ssp and breeding them for the past several years and I have never heard of anticostiensis before. Of course, the species is found on Anticosti Island but I did not know it had a ssp name. I wish to know more about it. Please don't hesitate to contact me in PM and thanks in advance!
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 17, 2015 18:35:47 GMT
jimfor, I will reply here, as other people may wish to know the answer too. Papilio anticostiensis was described by Strecker in 1873 (Lepidoptera, Rhopaloceres and Heteroceres, indigenous and exotic; with descriptions and colored illustrations, (2): 10, pl. 2, f. 2). The description can be viewed here: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11005552Adam. |
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 17, 2015 18:43:06 GMT
jimfor,
I bought some specimens of gaspeensis from you on eBay about 10 years ago. Welcome to the ICF.
Adam.
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Post by deliasfanatic on Apr 17, 2015 21:09:01 GMT
Which is the rarest and most sought after subspecies of P. machaon??. The short-tailed Himalayan-area ssp are quite hard to find. Offhand, I wouldn't say that there is ONE specific ssp that's particularly rare or sought-after. |
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Post by nomad on Apr 18, 2015 1:40:01 GMT
Thank you deliasfanatic. I should imagine then, that there a are private collectors with all the subspecies. It would be interesting to see some specimen images here. It would be especially interesting to see images of some of those disputed European subspecies together to see how they differ.
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Post by deliasfanatic on Apr 18, 2015 2:58:57 GMT
I'll photograph my machaon drawers sometime soon. Their representation is quite uneven, I'm afraid, as I'm missing a lot of subspecies (valid or not); in those that I have, there are nice series of some and only one or two specimens of others. I imagine it would be very difficult to gather a representative grouping of the Himalayan ssp, but I suppose not impossible if old collections provided material.
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Post by jimfor on Apr 18, 2015 3:19:07 GMT
Hello Adam, Thank you for your reply. After observing hundreds of specimens of brevicauda over the past years (of all ssp : brevicauda, gaspeensis and bretonensis), I have to disagree with this description. Do you have actual pictures of the specimens used to name ssp anticostiensis? Colored illustrations car be tricky and do not necessarily represent the true specimens used. In addition to it, very few specimens were used to describe it (4 from Anticosti Is. if I read properly). If you know more about it and if you can get me the pictures of the original specimens, please let me know.
Anticosti Island is known to have a very high population density of P.brevicauda. If only 4 specimens were collected over a period of 15 days, it was either a bad year or a marginal locality to find them on the island. Either way, chances are that the collected specimens might have been genetically close (possibly seeblings) which can show similar wing features. These features are not necessarily the "norm". I have seen specimens of all ssp greatly vary and many times, seeblings had similar features. All this to say that without seeing the original specimens collected, I very much doubt that ssp anticostiensis is a valid ssp for the species P.brevicauda. They are to my opinion variants of P.brevicauda ssp brevicauda.
Also, in regards to the tails lenght, I could show you examples of specimens collected the same year at the same locality showing a great variation in the lenght of the tails. Some brevicaudas have tails almost as long as P.polyxenes asterius and some have tails of only 2 or 3 mm long.
I wish to know more and I hope you have new informations/pictures to show me. Do you by any chance have scans of the color illustrations that came with the description of anticostiensis?
Thanks!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2015 11:44:37 GMT
 obtained this from looking through old specimens at a friends house, I had to reset it as it was a mangled mess, but alas it has no data, I don't think it is a hospiton/machaon hybrid as I have those and they are quite different, any ideas? |
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 18, 2015 17:08:24 GMT
Do you by any chance have scans of the color illustrations that came with the description of anticostiensis? Thanks! Scroll up to the previous page in the link I posted to the original description and you will see the plate. I do agree with you that the 4 specimens Strecker obtained may not represent the true variability of the population, and also note that all brevicauda populations have a significant variation among specimens. More study is needed to ascertain whether any of the subspecies are really distinct or not. Adam. |
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 18, 2015 17:11:45 GMT
obtained this from looking through old specimens at a friends house, I had to reset it as it was a mangled mess, but alas it has no data, I don't think it is a hospiton/machaon hybrid as I have those and they are quite different, any ideas? Can you post a photo of the underside please. It's definitely not European. Adam. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2015 17:20:45 GMT
here is the underside.  |
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Post by EarlyStages on Apr 19, 2015 8:53:41 GMT
FYI on two important mtDNA studies by a leading authority on the P. machaon complex. Keith |
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 19, 2015 13:48:27 GMT
Keith,
Thanks for posting those papers by Felix Sperling for everyone.
You can see from the second paper (fig. 1) why brevicauda is treated as belonging within Papilio machaon. The two samples of brevicauda are inside the machaon cluster on the tree.
Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 19, 2015 14:08:29 GMT
Dunc, As I thought from the upperside, and the underside confirms it, this is a specimen of the " sikkimensis" group of highland short tailed machaon. The name sikkimensis Moore is a junior homonym and was replaced in 1999 by hookeri Gaonkar. However, I cannot be certain without data which population in this group your specimen actually belongs to, although if it is an old specimen chances are it is hookeri itself (Sikkim, above 3000m altitude), but don't put that data on the label as it could be from elsewhere. This group may actually be a separate species from machaon, and it was separated by Lee (1980) who only examined 3 Chinese taxa. Importantly across its range from Tibet to Gansu this high altitude short tailed taxon does not interbreed with machaon at all, unlike in W Himalaya where ladakensis does interbreed with machaon asiatica. The following taxa all belong to this group: kiyonobu (short tailed, high altitude W Tibet) nolico (short tailed, high altitude C Tibet - Nyalam area) everesti (high altitude Everest area) hookeri (= sikkimensis, short tailed, high altitude SE Tibet) hieromax (short tailed, Qinghai) alpherakyi (short tailed, Gansu) Adam. |
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