Pieris brassicae

[daveuk]

A typical female & a "pink" female.
Also a darker "pink" Pieris rapae female.
Have not tampered with these photos. The specimens are this colour.
I have seen examples of these "pink" specimens in several British collections but have no idea how they were produced.

[Trehopr1]

Wow, never seen anything like those pink "tainted specimens !

I have always liked P. brassicae for being something of a "super-sized" cabbage species. I have managed to get 3 very nice females and a male for my collection.

Wonderful specimens !

[daveuk]

Wow, never seen anything like those pink "tainted specimens !

I have always liked P. brassicae for being something of a "super-sized" cabbage species. I have managed to get 3 very nice females and a male for my collection.

Wonderful specimens !

Thank You trehopr.
P brassicae was considered a real pest in my childhood. Gardeners here in the U.K. would kill caterpillars or squash any egg batches found on Cabbages & other Brassicae. Of course that is no longer the case. Like most butterfly species here it is nowhere near as common as it once was.

[bobw]

These pink Pieris were sold by a dealer here in the UK about 20 or 30 years ago, they were sold as pupae. His table was next to a friend and me at the Kempton Park show once at this time and my friend, who was a chemist specialising in foodstuffs, was talking to him and said afterwards that he understood everything he said, even when he was talking at a very technical level. It's almost certain that they were produced by using food dye in the larval foodplant.

[eurytides]

I have never seen or heard of this! I wonder what else could be produced this way?

[Chuck]

I have never seen or heard of this! I wonder what else could be produced this way?

The best known example in the animal kingdom is the flamingo. There are others- birds, fish, and reptiles. Not all color changes are external; salmon for example derive color of the flesh from their diet.

I'd expect to see food influenced colors in larvae more readily than in adults. That said, with Leps, it would be a matter of identifying one that does exhibit colorization, and the food plant is readily colored (e.g, eats cut plants that are known to suck up colored water.) Leps with white wings I would think would be most readily observable.

[bobw]

As far as I'm aware, the guy never admitted what he'd done, but the general consensus among those of us that discussed it was that beetroot was involved.

[wollastoni]

I heard that you can produce some Arctia caja forms by feeding them only with dandelion flowers.

[mcheki]

A few years ago P brassicae became introduced into South Africa. It has now become established as a breeding species around Cape Town and along the southern coast areas. This photo shows a selection of specimens collected in southern Africa, two males on the left and females on the right. The top left male comes from Namaqualand and the other three from Cape Town.

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[mcheki]

In Ethiopia there is a related species Pieris brassicoides. This is a male and female of this species, There is also an isolated subspecies in North Tanzania.

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[Yorky]

Normal pair with ab coerulea

[Cabintom]

A few years ago P brassicae became introduced into South Africa. It has now become established as a breeding species around Cape Town and along the southern coast areas.

There also seems to be an introduced population at Swakopmund, Namibia.
I wonder if there's any way to tell to which subspecies these populations belong?

[Yorky]

I REALLY need some of those brassicoides

[bobw]

The South African brassicae have much more heavily suffused ventral hindwings than European ones.

[Yorky]

The undersides are dusted in black much more than our European specimens.

[Borearctia]

The pink variation of Pieris brassicae (ab. carnea) is truly spectacular.
The aberration became known through a 1930 breeding stock from Aberdeen/UK.

Source: http://www.britishbutterflyaberrations. ... berrations

[daveuk]

The pink variation of Pieris brassicae (ab. carnea) is truly spectacular.
The aberration became known through a 1930 breeding stock from Aberdeen/UK.

Source: http://www.britishbutterflyaberrations. ... berrations

I only posted a picture of my female before. Here are the pair together both recto & verso. As you can see my male is much pinker than the female & a lot smaller than a typical male (abb. minor)