wild males darker?

[creobroter]

hey all, just wonderin, why are wild male saturniids that come in to see my females a darker color and have a dirtier look to them? is it what they ate as larvae?

[irisscientist]

I propose that the observed variation in colour of your saturniids is probably due to evolutionary variance in different populations, similar to that which was observed and reported for the Peppered Moth, Biston betularia (typica vs carbonaria) back in the late 1800's. Examples of further reading can be found in many places, so I simply list a few such examples in the following links:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1985.tb01555.x/abstract

jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/87/5/351.full.pdf+html

www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2640740?uid=7060048&uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=3&uid=33750&uid=67&uid=62&sid=21100839563081