T. Aplestris colouring - variations

[aimee]

After my T.Alpestris larvae morphed, I have noticed very slight varieties of markings that prehaps help in sexing?

I seem to recall in an article I read a while ago that female T.a are lighter in colour than males who generally tend to be quite dark.

I then went back and had a look at the juveniles and notcied that 2 of my 4 morphs are indeed a lot lighter colour than the other two.

Looking more closely I also noticed that the spot patterns along the sides on the light ones were relatively both the same - big/small, sparsely spaced spots.

The two darker ones have the spotting quite densly clumped together along the sides and have generally smaller spots and blue markings on the torso.

Has anyone else noticed this in adults as well as juveniles?

On Caleb's site :

http://www.threadnaught.net/~caleb/trialp.html

you can see on the female the spots are quite small and not clumped together, but the male is the opposite (although not clear on that particular photo)

So is this an actual way of sexing at a young age by the spot distributions and light/dark skin }colours or am I just going mad and imagining this??!

 

[chris]

Do you have T. a. alpestris, or apaunus? The male juvie apaunus tend to be much lighter in coloration than the females. In T. a. alpestris, the colors are pretty much the same, but the light spot behind the neck is more prominent in the males.

 

[aimee]

In actual fact I think the juvies are very mixed bloodwise. The parents were mixes of T.alpestris and T.apunus and I think there is a bit of cyreni in there too. The adult female was brown and had a larger bulkier head/body.

So in answer to your question - both I think but more T.alpestris. Could the lighter ones be male instead of female then?

 

[wouter]

Hi all,
I've seen this also with apuanus. The females I saw in Italy changed in colour, from light to dark and back. This could happen very fast. The juveniels I found there were all dark blue, but the spotting was different. Indeed some with many spots and other with less. I think the colour changing has to do with their feelings.

 

[henk]

Well I have found more greenbronw then blue T; alpestris here in South Belgium in more then once occassion. In all the localities those animals were living on a clay substrate soil so that this color adaptation made perfect sense with teh color of the bottom soil