Proceedings And Transactions Of The South London Entomological And Natural History Society 1965 Classic Reprint

Author : Royal Entomological Society of London
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781333022204
Total Pages : 788 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (222 download)

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Download or read book The Transactions of the Entomological Society of London for the Year 1896 (Classic Reprint) written by Royal Entomological Society of London and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-03 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Transactions of the Entomological Society of London for the Year 1896 Pierine imitators. What is the meaning of this coinci dence? The first answer that suggests itself is that it is simply an ordinary case of mimicry; the red spots belong originally to the Heliconine, and the Pierine has acquired similar spots in order to complete the mimetic picture. Two facts, however, militate against this supposition. The first is that these red patches, so far from being confined to the mimicking Pierines, are found to have a very wide distribution throughout the whole Pierine subfamily, existing not only, as we have seen, in non mimetic neotropical forms such as Pieris locusta and P. Phaloe, but in numerous old-world genera as well, reaching a great development in the Indian and Austre lian Delias, and having even left a relic in the common white butter ies of our own country. It would be extra vagant to suppose that these widespread characters owe their origin simply to the necessity for mimicking certain South American Heliconii. Moreover, as I have else where shown, such eu origin for the old-world forms as this hypothesis would involve is at variance with what is known of Pierine phylogeny. The second fact is that although several Heliconii which are not the subjects of mimicry show marks of the kind, yet they are most con stant, most distinct and most Pierine-like in species of Heliconine that serve as models. There must, it would seem, be a relation between the two forms which is not entirely due to mimicry by the Pierine. Are we then to say that the Heliconine is the mimic and the Pierine the model? This would appear to be going against all received ideas on the subject, and to be negatived by all that is known of the inedible qualities of Heliconine and of the ancestral coloration of the Pierines nevertheless, with respect to the particular marks in question I believe that it comes near to the true expression of the fact, and I would suggest that the key to the difficulty is to be found in the followiu considerations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."