Questionable Question Marks

[Nymphalis antiopa]

Hello everyone,

Wisconsin this year had an exceedingly warm early spring. The usual migrating Vanessid butterflies showed up around 2-4 weeks early in unusually large amounts. Colias and Papilio glaucus also showed up unseasonably early.

Question Marks in Wisconsin are weird. Instead of overwintering in their fall form which they do in much of the United States, they migrate up to the southeast and west in their summer form during May (with black hindwings) and spread northward. These adults then die off and we see the real summer form emerging in late June. We then see the crisp, fall forms in August and September before disappearing. They rarely show up after early October (although they have been seen as late as November.) None of this makes sense to me. What brood are these supposedly summer forms migrating up in May? Where are they flying from? I see overwintered, fall forms in Illinois and Missouri. But not Wisconsin.

This year has been even weirder with summer forms showing up in pristine condition in early April. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Chuck]

Wisconsin is more like Canada than Upstate NY, so it's quite likely that many or most species can't overwinter. In Upstate NY we have several Nymphalid species that overwinter.

The appearance of various Nymphalid species may be migration (e.g., Vanessa) or it may be just massive population explosion every summer. It depends on the species; some have no qualms about flying hundreds of miles "just because".

If of great interest, it's best to pick one species and start reading/ researching. Each Nymphalid species mentioned may well behave differently in Wisconsin.

Tiger swallowtails, according to iNat, seem to have been observed in number this year from Chiraq NW into Wisconsin. It likely is linked to any early warming this year. They, like many species of animal, somehow know whether it's going to snow again or not.

[vabrou]

The answer to these questions is that if one collects long enough, you will see that what you assume to be, is not so. Having collected continuously non-stop since 1969 to today 2024 (55 years) (=more than 51,000,000 trap hours), we also identified and logged millions of adult insects daily during most of this time. What we discovered is that most of the information found in all our centuries of scientific literature is false, and are just the anecdotal ramblings of any particular author. You will find no actual evidence presented by all of these authors.

Here is the first such phenology inforrmation in existence concerning P. interragationis, though, I have yet to publish it. Attached is a phenogram concerning Polygonia interrogationis (Fabricius) adults in Louisiana. Here there are five annual broods, adults captured in all 12 months. Sure, some years adults did not appear e.g. January our coldest month here. But, in other less colder years, many are active in January. Bottom line, don't make uninformed assumptions based upon insufficient investigation, nor repeat what you read in publications, as fact. And of course in Canada, this species probably does not have five annual broods. Key word (probably), as I didn't perform my investigations there, so I can't be sure.

[vabrou]

Around 10 years ago I published a two page species account concerning Polygonia comma in Louisiana. In that publication, I reported P. comma had only three annual broods then. But, I could not convincingly state that this species also has five annual broods, due to my very small sample size of 44 adults. Though this was a huge number of adults recorded in scientific literature for Louisiana compared to the 3 adults previously. Often I would have to carefully look at 100 or more P. interrogationis to find a single P. comma. But I do believe P. comma also has 5 annual broods as does P. interrogationis in Louisiana.

[adamcotton]

Paul K requested that I split this topic into a new one, 'Vanessa atalanta migration 2024', in order to report about it separate from discussion of 'Questionable Question Marks'.

Please find the new topic at
viewtopic.php?p=10099#p10099
in the Lepidoptera section.
Please post about Vanessa atalanta there, not in this thread.

Adam.