Colotis

[daveuk]

I am a big fan of Pieridae in general. So for me this genus really ticks all the boxes. I don't currently have that many photographs of specimens in my collection so have started this thread to encourage myself to take a few more.

Male Colotis zoe. Madagascar
Pair of Colotis danae annae. South Africa
Male Colotis fausta. Iran

[livingplanet3]

Male Colotis zoe. Madagascar...

Very nice - that's a rather rare color in butterflies.

[Cabintom]

Male Colotis zoe. Madagascar
Pair of Colotis danae annae. South Africa
Male Colotis fausta. Iran

C. danae and C. annae have been split. What you have is C. annae annae.

[daveuk]

Pairs of Colotis ione from South Africa & Tanzania
Pair of Colotis regina from Tanzania

[daveuk]

A male Colotis regina from Democratic Republic of Congo
& a close up of the purple tip. I find it impossible to take a photograph adequate enough to convey the beauty of the structural colouration in these butterflies. The wing tips change from reddish purple all the way to violet blue.

[Cabintom]

I'm not sure about the female, but your male Colotis ione from South Africa looks more like C. erone to me. What's the data for that pair?

[daveuk]

I'm not sure about the female, but your male Colotis ione from South Africa looks more like C. erone to me. What's the data for that pair?

Picture of the pair again with data

[daveuk]

Two pairs of Colotis hetaera from Uganda. Subspecies aspasia

[daveuk]

Colotis celimene. Pair recto & verso
Male from Kenya. Female from Uganda. One of the more rarely encountered species in collections.

[Cabintom]

I'm not sure about the female, but your male Colotis ione from South Africa looks more like C. erone to me. What's the data for that pair?

Picture of the pair again with data

According to Woodhall, in males of C. erone the FW apex has "3 discrete metallic purple cells and no grey scaling in the black border. Some specimens have a tiny extra spot of purple on the costal edge of top, never 4 full-sized spots".
Your male specimen is perfectly in range for C. erone, which is what I believe it to be.

For females of C. erone he writes that "orange-tipped forms less common. WSF f. erone and DSF f. millari both have 4 dark spots in the orange, compared to five in female ione orange-tipped forms."
I'd say the female is correctly ID'd.

[Cabintom]

Colotis celimene. Pair recto & verso
Male from Kenya. Female from Uganda. One of the more rarely encountered species in collections.

From Williams' "Afrotropical Butterflies and Skippers":

Habitat: Dry, frost-free savanna. In West Africa in Sudan savanna (Larsen, 2005a). May penetrate
sub-desert habitats (Larsen, 1991c). In Tanzania at altitudes from 700 to 2 000 m (Kielland, 1990d).

Habits: This is generally an uncommon species. The flight is fast and direct, and from one to two
metres above the ground. They often fly long distances, in an almost straight line (Larsen, 2005a). In
South Africa males have been observed to select a large isolated tree as the centre-piece of their
territory and hover backwards and forwards, or in circles, for long periods of time, a metre or so from
the tree and a few metres above the ground (Swanepoel, 1953). Similar behaviour has been noted in
Namibia (Swart, 1997) and Kenya (M. Williams, unpublished). The species of tree does not seem to
matter but the crown and sides are invariably densely-leaved. No other species of Colotis is known to
evince this type of behaviour, so hovering males can be specifically identified from more than a
hundred metres away. Heath et al. (2002) note that males may actually perch, chasing other butterflies
that pass their resting spot, most unusual behaviour for a pierid. Both sexes feed from flowers. Males
occasionally mudpuddle (Larsen, 1991c). Both sexes often settle on bare ground.

[daveuk]

I'm not sure about the female, but your male Colotis ione from South Africa looks more like C. erone to me. What's the data for that pair?

Picture of the pair again with data

Thanks for your input yet again.That is good news as far as I am concerned. C erone is or was missing from my collection. I have other males from South Africa so will check them out.

According to Woodhall, in males of C. erone the FW apex has "3 discrete metallic purple cells and no grey scaling in the black border. Some specimens have a tiny extra spot of purple on the costal edge of top, never 4 full-sized spots".
Your male specimen is perfectly in range for C. erone, which is what I believe it to be.

For females of C. erone he writes that "orange-tipped forms less common. WSF f. erone and DSF f. millari both have 4 dark spots in the orange, compared to five in female ione orange-tipped forms."
I'd say the female is correctly ID'd.

[daveuk]

As you may have gathered I still haven't quite grasped how to put quotes to replies. Apologies for that. Thankyou Cabintom once again for all the information you have provided on C celimine. I have at least two more specimes of this species. Will photograph them when I get to the box they are in !!. The photos I took do not really do this one justice. The verso of this species is particularly beautiful I think. A shame that it is uncommon.

[daveuk]

Colotis vesta princeps. Pair recto & verso. Uganda

Colotis vesta argillaceus. Male recto & verso. South Africa

[daveuk]

Colotis chrysonome. Two males. Uganda
Colotis aurigineus. Male recto & verso. Tanzania
Colotis eris. Two males Uganda

[Cabintom]

Colotis chrysonome. Two males. Uganda
Colotis aurigineus. Male recto & verso. Tanzania
Colotis eris. Two males Uganda

C. eris is now Teracolus eris.

Colotis euippe euippe (Linnaeus, 1758)
The name of this species has often been misspelled as "evippe".

(males)
From north-central DRC:



The following, although collected at the same locales at the same time, are notably smaller in size than the preceding and feature reduced apical bands. I don't know if this is significant... Colotis are quite variable.



From north-east DRC


(female)
From north-central DRC:


The females with reduced apical bands are, like the males, smaller than those with full-apical bands.


From north-east DRC

[daveuk]

Lovely specimens & thanks for the information re eris. To be fair it does not really resemble any other Colotis species.
Agree with you entirely about the variability within this genus. I had job lot boxes of Pierids from Uganda a few years back containing a number of Colotis species. Though they all have data none of them were named so have had to do some delving myself to try & name them correctly. I am not always successful in that so am glad you are on hand to put me right.

[daveuk]

Colotis protomedia
A pair recto & verso. Uganda
Male verso with no data.
The aptly named Yellow Splendour. If I had to choose a favourite Colotis this would probably be it.

[Cabintom]

Colotis protomedia
A pair recto & verso. Uganda
Male verso with no data.
The aptly named Yellow Splendour. If I had to choose a favourite Colotis this would probably be it.

Your prefer it over zoe or regina or ... ?

I don't often get out to areas where Colotis fly (security concerns), but my favorite of the species that I've collected is Colotis antevippe zera (Lucas, 1852) (though I'm told the ssp. is of doubtful validity).

[adamcotton]

As you may have gathered I still haven't quite grasped how to put quotes to replies. Apologies for that.

There are 2 ways to quote, either highlight the specific text you want to quote in a longer post and click the "Quote" button that appears, or click " in the options at top right corner of the post to quote the whole message.

You must ensure you reply below the last "/quote", then it will appear outside the quoted text. I edited your previous post accordingly.

Adam.