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Corresponding author: Zdeněk Faltýnek Fric ( zdfric@gmail.com ) Academic editor: Martin Wiemers
© 2024 Anna Pilařová, Stanislava Zachardová, Zdeněk Faltýnek Fric, Vladimír Vrabec.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Pilařová A, Zachardová S, Fric ZF, Vrabec V (2024) An attempt of interspecies mating between Phengaris nausithous and P. teleius (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae). Nota Lepidopterologica 47: 105-111. https://doi.org/10.3897/nl.47.118947
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Interspecies mating is rarely observed even in the wild. Such a case in Lycaenidae is reported and photographically documented for the species pairing Phengaris teleius (Bergsträsser, 1779) and P. nausithous (Bergsträsser, 1779), which was observed on 19 July 2016 in northern Bohemia near the village of Hynčice, Czech Republic. Possible causes of this phenomenon are discussed.
From time to time, a mating between different species of butterflies is observed. The observation of such behaviour or the occurrence of hybrids in the wild is more common in some groups of butterflies than in others. More such information from the wild is available for Papilionidae (genera Ornithoptera Boisduval, 1832, Papilio Linnaeus, 1758, Troides Hübner, 1819) (
Survey of species of the genus Phengaris is mandatory for the conservation of these butterflies protected by the EU Habitat Directive. Our survey of Large Blues of the genus Phengaris took place in the area of the Protected Landscape Area Broumovsko (Northern Bohemia, Czech Republic) in 13 habitat patches in the vicinity of the villages of Hynčice, Ruprechtice and Vižňov which contained the flowering food plant Sanguisorba officinalis L. from 4 July to 5 August, 2016. The location of the patches is shown in Fig.
Distribution of patches where the species Phengaris teleius and P. nausithous were marked in Broumovsko in northern Bohemia of the Czech Republic in 2016. The place of observation is patch H2. Drawn in publicly available document from www.mapy.cz.
We randomly took photographs of individuals throughout the survey, and the sequence of images from the interspecific mating of the aforementioned taxa was revealed later after a thorough review of the photos taken at site Hynčice 2 near the river Stěnava (GPS coordinates roughly in the middle of the territory: 50°36'58"N, 16°18'35"E, elevation about 400 m). The date of the pictures is July 19, 2016, time 13:25 CEST, by one of us (VV).
After the survey in Broumovsko had finished, we encountered an unusual attempt at interspecific mating of a female P. nausithous and male P. teleius during analyses of photo-documentation (Figs
Despite these two species being closely related (see
The vast majority of interspecific copulation cases happen within one genus. For instance, in American Limenitis archippus (Cramer, 1776) and related species (see
Such intraspecific mating is a prerequisite for hybridization (Descimon and Mallet 2009); however, natural hybridization in Lepidoptera is rare. A famous example is “Erebia serotina Descimon & de Lesse, 1953”, which is a natural hybrid of males of E. pronoe (Esper ,1780) and females of E. epiphron (Knoch, 1783) (
Observations of interspecific mating between different members of the family Lycaenidae are reported by
What are the reasons for inter-specific mating, or even hybridisation? In general, it results from an imperfect reproduction barrier. Such barriers in Lepidoptera usually consist of several levels, many species combining olfactory recognition (
Hybridization can have negative impacts when some species newly colonise or are introduced into a landscape with closely related species (
We cannot be sure why the observed attempted pairing of Phengaris butterflies occurred. As the species in Phengaris vary in number of androconia (see for instance
This work was partially supported by the Czech Ministry of Interior project VK01010103 (B.C.B.). Experiments and observations comply with the current laws of the Czech Republic where they were performed. The authors would like to thank the company HBH Projekt spol. s r. o. for financial support of field research. They also thank the administration of the Broumovsko Protected Landscape Area for the granted exemption from the protection conditions of the species of the genera Phengaris and Formica, no. 01275/BR/16. Special thanks to students of the Czech University of Life Sciences Kateřina Hejretová, Anežka Štěpánková, and Šárka Valachová for their help in the field. David Lees helped improve the English.