When we were on holiday in Cornwall we saw lots of Speckled woods, most of them looked to be more chestnut in colour than the ones up here in Yorkshire which are more brown, any thoughts anyone.
thanks
Speckled Wood colour variation
- Pete Eeles
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
Hi Judi - from the species page: "The appearance of this butterfly changes from north to south, forming a "cline", where individuals in the north are dark brown with white spots, with those in more southerly locations being dark brown with orange spots. This has given rise to a number of subspecies". See:
http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species. ... es=aegeria
Cheers,
- Pete
http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species. ... es=aegeria
Cheers,
- Pete
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- Padfield
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
Cornwall is very close to the imaginary dividing line between ssp. aegeria (the orange subspecies) and ssp. tircis (the brown and cream one, familiar in the UK). There is a sort of half-way form in the Scillies, ssp. insularis. The line runs from NW to SE, roughly from North-Western France through Switzerland (I'm on the cusp) into Italy. In my experience, anywhere near the line you can find intermediate specimens, even in mainland UK.
Guy
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
It can get far more extreme near the Med:
- Chris Jackson
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
And possibly as extreme as this (near Marseilles). Or is this a sub-species ?
Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
That'd be a perfect mélange of Speckled Wood and Wall Brown were such a thing possible.
- Chris Jackson
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
C'est vrai David
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Re: Speckled Wood colour variation
It's not possible, CJ.cjackson wrote:C'est vrai David