UK Butterflies
Building a Community of Responsible Butterfly Enthusiasts in Britain & Ireland
Building a Community of Responsible Butterfly Enthusiasts in Britain & Ireland
This page provides access to all named aberrations of a given species and Goodson & Read (1969) is a key resource in this regard.
Description to be completed.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk
This section contains those aberrations that are considered new, and have yet to be formally defined.
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red bands replaced by white.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= flava Eitel.Int.Ent.Z.1924.18.p.141.
= testacea Pionneau.Bull.Soc.Sci.Nat.Ouest.1924.4.(4).p.59.
The red bands replaced by straw yellow. Eitel's flava had the bands dull yellow, the colour of the border of antiopa [Nymphalis antiopa, Camberwell Beauty]. Pionneau's testacea had tawny yellow bands. One can hardly separate these tones of yellow.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red bands replaced by orange-cinnabar.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= rosea Pionneau.(in error).Gaede.Seitz.Macrolep.1930.1.p.199.
The normally red bands of a beautiful rose-colour on a deep black ground. The bands shaded with white near the costa of the forewings and interrupted with black in the median part. Blotches in the apex of the forewings pure white and whitish scales seem mixed up with the black ones of the ground colour making it seem abnormally transparent when viewed against the light (the rosy bands then seeming almost mauve). Near the inner margin and close to the bright band there is a whitish blotch or suffusion. On the hindwings one of the median ocelli is white centred on the upperside. Gaede in Seitz quite wrongly includes a rosea Pionneau in atalanta. Pionneau described rosea under cardui [Vanessa cardui, Painted Lady] and says the forewings are rosy; Gaede also gives a wrong description in saying that the bands are bright red.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red bands replaced by ochre-brown.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The normally cinnabar-red bands replaced by dull red or carmine-red.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The band of the forewings is apricot-orange instead of red and the costo-apical white patch is salmon-buff. There are four normal white apical spots. On the hindwing the marginal band is apricot-orange. The basal parts of both fore and hindwings are Bordeaux-red instead of black.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The ground colour grey-black, with the bands whitish-brownish or isabel [isabelline], therefore quite light.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red bands of the forewings thickly dusted with black so that only a dark wine-brown shimmers through. Hindwings as in ab. merrifieldi Standfuss but not darkened. The figure of merrifieldi shows the hindwings with blue spots in the red band instead of black ones, and some blue spots preceding, and touching, the red band.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red band of the forewings is divided in the centre by black scaling, which extends along the nervures.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= bipunctata Gussich.Glasnik.Hrvats.Prirodosl.Drustva.1917.29.p.214.
= septiespupillata Verity.Ent.Rec.1919.31.p.198.
= albimaculata Pruffer.Bull.Acad.Pol.Sci.Lettres.1920.p.218.
= albipunctata Ragusa.Nat.Sic.1920.23.p.144.
= martha Stephan.Iris.1923.37.p.36.
The red band of the forewings showing a white spot. Verity counts this spot in with the white submarginal ones, to make seven in all. He says that it only applies to males since the females usually have it and males do not. This is not so in England.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
Verity gives this name to exceptional females without a white spot in the red band, leaving only the six white submarginal ones. Females without this white spot are not exceptional and since Linnaeus did not mention a white spot in the red band the name is merely a synonym of the type form.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red band of the forewings showing a white spot, but surrounded by black.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The red band of the forewings is distinctly narrowed. Gaede in Seitz Macrolep.1.p.199 mentions an ab. angustata Stauder in error. This form belonged to N. antiopa [Nymphalis antiopa, Camberwell Beauty].
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= cyclops Stichel.Seitz.Macrolep.1909.1.p.198.,fig.Standf.Handbuch.1896.pl.7.f.7.
= aestiva Reuss.Entom.1910.43.p.303.
The figure shows the forewings with the apical area, between the white spots and the margin, well dusted with reddish scales, and the bases of all wings dusted similarly with reddish. The figure of cyclops is similar but has one or two additional characters, the red band of the forewings being strongly widened and in the cell near the costa there is a projection which encloses a double black spot. Reuss's aestiva had a red suffusion at the apex and base of the forewings.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the forewings the main white costal spot is completely absent. In the apical submarginal area there is a series of six large somewhat elongated white spots in place of the normal row of uneven large and small ones. The hindwings have the spots in the red band very faint.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= albo-punctura Frohawk.Vars.Brit.Butts.1938.p.87.pl.20.figs.1-2.
The main costal white spot of the forewings reduced and somewhat obscured and the two lowest white spots of the apical submarginal chain very much enlarged, the bottom one being more than twice normal size, the two together forming a large squarish white blotch. Beneath this, in the red band, is a small white spot. Hindwings showing a small white spot near the costa slightly inwards from the red band. The red band has no black spots. Various authors give figures, sometimes without the white spot on the hindwings. See Berge's Schmett.pl.53.f.15.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The normally white spots of the forewings are yellow or yellowish.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The normally white spots of the forewings are blackish-brown green, excessively sombre and almost the same as the ground colour, although the pattern of them can be seen. The red bands are normal.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
The figure shows the red band of the forewings somewhat obscured with black dusting. The main white costal spot much enlarged and suffused, with a white streak running from it down to the red band along the costal vein, and a prominent white spot in the red band. Hindwings with blue spots replacing the black ones in the red marginal band and small blue streaks on the inner edge of the band running into the black ground in small wedges. The description is carried on from Ent.Z.8.p.101. The blue spots in the red band, prominent in the figure, are said to be only dusted with blue.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= leliva Wize.Pozn.Towarz.Przyj.Nauk.Prace.Kom.Matem.-przyr.1922.B.1.p.261.
On the upperside of the forewings, outside the uppermost white spot, there is a little white dot, so as to produce a figure reminiscent of the Turkish Crescent and Star.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings the ocelli along the red marginal band are very prominent in the form of distorted black half moons. The ground colour of all wings is blackish-grey instead of velvety black.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings the normally round or wedge-shaped black spots in the red band are elongated and rectangular, appearing as lines.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings the red band contains no black spots and the elongated bluish spot is also absent. On the forewings the two lower white spots of the submarginal row are bordered with blue, the larger one on both sides, the smaller one on its outer side only.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings the double spot near the anal angle is greenish-blue instead of the normal blue.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings the red band is distinctly broader than usual.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the hindwings one or more of the black spots in the red band are blue-centred.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= octocyanea Cabeau.Rev.Mens.Soc.Ent.Nam.1911.p.23.
= cyanosticta Fritsch.Ent.Rundsch.1913.30.p.26.
On the hindwings there are blue-centred ocelli in front of the red band. Cabeau's octocyanea had four little blue spots, 1mm in size, in front of the red band. Fritsch's cyanosticta had small blue spots before the red band.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
Forewings with less than five white spots in the row near the apex.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
Ground colour of the upperside of the wings brown-black, on the inside (basewards) of the red band of the forewings a thick black line and on the inside of the hindwings red band black spots.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
= atlantoides Lambillion.Rev.Mens.Soc.Ent.Nam.1911.p.91.
= minutior Verity.Ent.Rec.1924.36.Suppl.p.42.
Small dwarfed examples 38mm-50mm. Lambillion’s atlantoides was 40mm.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
On the underside of the forewings the apex, and middle of marginal area of the hindwings, are yellowish.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
Underside of the hindwings nearly unicolorous blackish, the yellow costal spot, for the greater part, dusted with black.
Natural History Museum
britishbutterflyaberrations.co.uk (all aberrations)
