White butterfly--ID help06/24/06 - Phoebis agarithe

I concur.

It looks like a checkered white to me. Perhaps a female.

… Julia Booth, 24 June, 2006 - 9:28pm

Thanks...

...I was thinking it must be a female, if it was a checkered white, but it just didn't look like the photograph in my book. However, the regional guide (which has no pictures) says the checkered white it abundant here, so...I'll go with that.

Elizabeth

… E Moon, 24 June, 2006 - 9:35pm

The angle of the black on the wing seems wrong

for a checkered white. I'm thinking this could be a female Phoebis agarithe or P. philea. Continuous, rather than broken, diagonal row of black smudges seems to favor P. agarithe. Opler(1) says there's a pink-white female form. I've been searching for an image on the web, and the best I could find was here.

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 24 June, 2006 - 9:36pm

Is it normal for the females

Is it normal for the females to be so variable? I am still learning about gender differences.

… Julia Booth, 24 June, 2006 - 11:00pm

The most dramatic one I can think of is Eastern Tiger female

- they come in either black or yellow.

There are also seasonal variations in some species, too - just to make things more exciting!

… Hannah Nendick-Mason, 25 June, 2006 - 5:49am

In some species

...there's variability in the females. Sometimes it's a variant across territory, and sometimes two or more forms coexist in the same territory (also true of the females of some damselflies.)

I found a photograph of a white-form female large orange sulfur in a book, and though it's small, it does like quite a lot like my specimen. The spots are in the right place.

I'm moving it to the guide page for that reason.

… E Moon, 24 June, 2006 - 11:07pm

Thanks...

...I didn't think the markings were quite right--and it reminded me of a sulfur except it was so *white*. The range maps I have say it doesn't come quite this far north, but they're older...and as we know, things are moving north with the changes in climate.

That picture certainly looks a lot like it, and P. agarithe is closer to me.

Thanks a lot.

E.

… E Moon, 24 June, 2006 - 10:06pm