mpenn
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by mpenn on Apr 20, 2014 11:13:25 GMT -8
Hi everyone,its not to often I post something, Last Saturday my daughter and I paid a visit to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory I think we were there for about 1 hour. I was just enjoying the butterflies and taking a few pictures inside and we were about to leave when I caught a glimpse of this glorious male O.P.euphorion f.supermultispot Bela von Knötgen 1997, notice, it has very little black maculation on the forewings. At the time I was under pressure to leave, as we had to be somewhere by a certain time. So I left thinking that I didn,t have a photo of this gorgeous insect. Mike  |
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Post by marcingajewski on Apr 20, 2014 11:19:18 GMT -8
Hi everyone,its not to often I post something, Last Saturday my daughter and I paid a visit to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory I think we were there for about 1 hour. I was just enjoying the butterflies and taking a few pictures inside and we were about to leave when I caught a glimpse of this glorious male O.P.euphorion f.supermultispot Bela von Knötgen 1997, notice, it has very little black maculation on the forewings. At the time I was under pressure to leave, as we had to be somewhere by a certain time. So I left thinking that I didn,t have a photo of this gorgeous insect. Mike View Attachment Hi Mike , Really amazing butterfly and picture , I'am not sure about form name but is really one of them i still sooking  Marcin |
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Post by nomad on Apr 20, 2014 11:47:26 GMT -8
Very nice and rare, a amazing form. |
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Post by timmsyrj on Apr 23, 2014 9:25:50 GMT -8
Looks like some of the specimens produced on the way to the famous golden euphorion pairs a while back, maybe the gene is still around for some more with a bit of selective breeding, this time with back crosses to wild stock to keep it going.
Rich
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mpenn
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by mpenn on Apr 26, 2014 7:27:29 GMT -8
Hi everyone, Its certainly looks like two Australians were breeding O.p.euphorion at around the same time. Mr.G.Sankowsky and Ms.Silke Weyland and having roughly the same results. Attached is part of a paper by Okano 1980 describing f.kogane.and f.atsukoae. The two forms male and female certainly look on their way towards the male and female f.weylandi. I guess if one breeds enough O.p.euphorion eventually you might see these forms.   Mike |
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Post by ash on Apr 28, 2014 23:36:29 GMT -8
Regarding the line-bred golden forms of O.p.euphorion, I see Garry Sankowsky most weeks (he volunteers at my work) and he told me it all started with a wild caught male that had a gold spot in the forewing. As far as we are aware that line bred stock died out long long ago. I will ask him if he can pen what and how it all happened. I think both the Weyland and Sankowsky lines were from the same mutation but I am not sure. My understanding is that it was only a few generations from the first mutant to those figured in this work.
cheers
Ash
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mpenn
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by mpenn on Apr 29, 2014 15:54:22 GMT -8
Hi there Ash, Thanks for you,re imput, that would be great, if you can obtain more information from Mr.Sankowsky. Hopefully he kept notes on his breeding experiments. I,m sure other members of this forum as well as myself would like more info on the history of these particular forms.
Mike
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Post by timmsyrj on Apr 30, 2014 0:45:35 GMT -8
I read somewhere, on a forum or something, can't remember, but I thought the golden form came from a very pale female in someone's backyard that laid a few eggs and resulted in 4 male and one female , the female was paired with one male and the rest is history, unfortunately they went a little too far with inbreeding and the gene became too weak and was lost, shame.
Rich
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Post by ash on Apr 30, 2014 4:09:41 GMT -8
Hi Rich, My understanding is that it occurred twice, once with G. Sankowsky from a male and once with S.Weyland and J.Olive from a female caught near Kuranda. I will find out more in case I am mistaken. Either way it has been a long count of years (all my life I think) since a golden Cairns birdwing flew. Ash
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Post by ash on Apr 30, 2014 20:15:58 GMT -8
Hi all, I talked to the Sankowsky's today at lunch. The Ornithoptera priamus euphorion abberations that they bred from were a separate event from the ones bred by Ms. S. Weyland and Mr J.Olive. The Sankowsky's bred theirs at Mount Tambourine nearly forty years ago in the 1970's from a north Queensland male that had yellow in the forewing. By selective breeding, matching progeny with large amounts of white in the females with large amounts of yellow in the males they were able to line breed individuals that were almost solid gold or solid white. This was all done in a butterfly enclosure using the same genetic line either backcrossing to parents (birdwings are fairly long lived) or sibling crossing. The mutations appeared to be recessive and the spots gradually disappeared through the generations if crossed to normal wild-type birdwings. Gary bred forms with much gold but all retained a little bit of metalic green in the males or a bit of black in the females. The individuals were mostly normal size and functioned as normal adults. Most of the specimens he produced went to collections in Japan and were described in 1980.
The same approach appears to have been used by Weyland and Olive who by continuing breeding with a similar abberation that appeared in a backyard caught female were able to eventually line breed them to completely gold or completely white. Does anyone know from labels in their collections when these specimens were bred? Perhaps there were golden birdwings on the wing in my life time after all!
Ash
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Post by exoticimports on May 1, 2014 5:43:34 GMT -8
Somewhat off topic, but think you might enjoy my story.
In 2000, I was on a yacht off the Aussie coast. We went ashore on Magnetic Island (near Townsville). About five minutes hiking into the town I spied a male Ornithoptera feeding on a Hibiscus bloom.
I grabbed the specimen with my hands and carried it around unharmed. Something was odd about this one, but I just couldn't place it. What was it? It was a normal Ornithoptera by all accounts, but something really set off my thinking...SOMETHING was different about this one, but I just could NOT figure out what!
After about 20 minutes I tired of carrying it around, and didn't want to run afoul of Australian authorities, so I released it.
Five minutes later it occurred to me...it was blue. Blue as a urvilleanus. That's what had thrown me off- it looked like any garden variety urvilleanus. Except it didn't belong there or was entirely the wrong color.
Following that, all Ornithoptera I saw were the standard green euphorion.
ETA: having handled thousands of urvilleanus and hundreds of O. Victoria I can say this: urvilleanus does not vary much. However, Victoria does- I have seen "subspecies" that look like other subspecies, and odd color variants; one male example I had (seized by USFWS) the green/yellow on the underside was uniform olive drab; unfortunately I never got to see the top! But on the point of breeding to get different color morphs, certainly Victoria would provide a great variety of morphs and oddities.
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Post by ash on May 1, 2014 14:33:21 GMT -8
Thanks for your story. You talk of a place of the world close to my heart!
Yes Magnetic Island is one of the places (like nearby Rowse Bay and offshore Palm Island) where you can see occasional blueish male Ornithoptera priamus euphorion. I have not seen one quite as cobalt blue as an O.p.urvillianus but several times I caught my breath to see them a lovely aquamarine blue and sometimes caught them when I was a kid. It is also a region where you can see some of the very largest dark female O.p.euphorion and very varied males from no yellow spots to many yellow spots and with a broad black margin. They are so lovely to see a group of varied males circling a female feeding at a Schefflera above you, and all rivalling flashing their stuff to get her attention!
cheers
Ash
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cyane
Junior Member
Posts: 47
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Post by cyane on May 1, 2014 16:20:28 GMT -8
Here is a pic of a specimen bred by John Olive when he was breeding towards the all gold euphorion. As you can see the date is 24-7-93. I have also included pics of postcards that were produced at that time (taken by A. Perera) that show the live adults. David Hall. Attachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAttachment Deleted |
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Post by ash on May 3, 2014 22:46:59 GMT -8
Thankyou David! Do you know if anyone else has ever bred golden forms other than the Sankowsky's and Weyland/Olive? Ash
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cyane
Junior Member
Posts: 47
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Post by cyane on May 11, 2014 17:15:41 GMT -8
Hi Ash, no I dont know of any other golden euphorion, in fact I didnt know Sankowsky had bred them until I read your thread. I do know that some of John Olives "halfway" pupae ended up with a breeder in Northern NSW. The resulting adults were crossed with richmondia. I obtained 2 of these hybrid pupae (being told they were richmondia !) They took a very long time to emerge and were barely able to expand their wings. I've attached pics of the male golden euphorion "halfway" x normal richmondia hybrid. Its an old pic, I no longer have the specimen. I've also attached more pics of the golden euphorion that John Olive sent me and a pic of the most golden richmondia that I ever bred. I was breeding richmondia commercially in the 1990s.     |
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