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Seasonal variability of wing length and eyespots in populations of Erebia ligea (L.) (Lepidoptera, Satyridae) in the Middle Urals

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Abstract

The flight period of Erebia ligea (Linnaeus, 1758) in the Sysert District of Sverdlovsk Province lasts from early July until early August only in the odd-numbered years. The species is characterized by protandry, its males emerging 5–7 days before females. Erebia ligea manifests sexual and seasonal variation of the wing length and diameter of the eyespots in the Middle Urals. According to the literature and newly obtained data, the relative male/female wing length varies within the species range. The vectors of the seasonal variation of the body size are opposite in the males and females: in early summer the largest males and the smallest females occur, then mediumsized individuals appear, while the smallest males and the largest females fly at the end of the warm period. Although the males of Erebia ligea are larger than females, the latter have larger eyespots on the wings. Seasonal variation of the diameters of the forewing eyespots is largely similar in the two sexes: individuals with larger spots appear earlier in the season than those with small spots. The eyespots treated as phenes in this study develop on the wings only if the remaining spots of the wing pattern attain a threshold size. A threshold nature was shown for P4 spot in M 3-Cu 1 cell of the fore wing and G2 spot in cell M 1–M 2 of the hind wing. Individuals with and without phene G2 have opposite vectors of seasonal variation of the sizes of the rest spots of the hind wing pattern. It is apparently the threshold character of variation of these elements of the wing pattern that defines the variation of the proportion of phenetic combinations of the eyespots in the individuals emerging in different periods of the season. Describing phenetic variation at the population level, one should remember that the percentage of the “morphs” or phenetic combinations may vary during a season, especially in the protandric species.

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  1. Institute for Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Division of Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia

    E. Yu. Zakharova

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Original Russian Text © E.Yu. Zakharova, 2010, published in Entomologicheskoe Obozrenie, 2010, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 320–332.

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Zakharova, E.Y. Seasonal variability of wing length and eyespots in populations of Erebia ligea (L.) (Lepidoptera, Satyridae) in the Middle Urals. Entmol. Rev. 90, 669–678 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0013873810060011

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