Plebejus icarioides pembina-gynandromorph

[Paul K]

I collected this specimen in Alberta, Canada, Crowsnest Pass on beautiful mountain meadow on Jun12, 2024.
The forewings are male and one side hindwing is female and second hindwing is partially both. I suppose it looks like mosaic gynandromorph, isn’t it.

IMG_6050.jpeg (251.45 KiB) Viewed 657 times

Habitat

[wollastoni]

Wow ! Wonderful specimen !
A great catch, congrats !

[mothman55]

That's a beauty Paul, a once in a lifetime catch. Can you post a pic of the ventral side?
You likely got a lot of new interesting stuff in Alberta.

[Paul K]

That's a beauty Paul, a once in a lifetime catch. Can you post a pic of the ventral side?
You likely got a lot of new interesting stuff in Alberta.

Thank you.
Ventral side is rather normal, nothing unusual as both sexes are identical on the ventral side. I will post it when I get to label it as I’d like to avoid unnecessary handling.
I spread it sometime back in July last year, placed it in drawer and didn’t pay much attention to it.
Yesterday I started to identify and label my 2023/24 specimens and as usually I placed it up side down to determined the species. After placing back I just noticed that there was something odd.
I travel to Alberta almost every year so most of common stuff I already collected but last year I passed Rocky Mountains to British Columbia where the butterfly fauna is much different. I’m planning to go there also this year for few days.

[Trehopr1]

A wonderful exciting capture indeed Paul !

Not too many of us ever make such a sensational capture in our lifetimes.

[Paul K]

This is ventral side

IMG_6068.jpeg (312.84 KiB) Viewed 483 times

[kevinkk]

You'd never know the topside was so much different. I don't see any differences in the ventral side.
Capturing a wild abberation is an exciting thing and something to be proud of.
Often it isn't until we go back through our finds that we find such cool things, only after tumbling my agates did I find
what is called an "enhydro" where a water bubble is trapped inside. Almost impossible to photograph, I've already tried.