Please ID Skipper2, Thanks.

[Cruiser]

Welcome to the forum and possibily yet another TBD! for AH/S'pore

[Viscount]

Could it be a hoary palmer(unkana ambasa batera)?
Reported sighting here on the 08th Sept 2002 at Kranji by Commander, Simon and Gan.

[Commander]

Could it be a hoary palmer(unkana ambasa batera)?
Reported sighting here on the 08th Sept 2002 at Kranji by Commander, Simon and Gan.

Thanks for the suggestion. But the Hoary Palmer is a lot more distinctive in its undersides. Unless Yong San's specimen is an aberration ("freak" of nature), it's more likely to be something else. Some escapee from plants that have been brought in from overseas e.g. Malaysia/Indonesia could also be a possibility.

The Hoary Palmer looks like this :

[Viscount]

What could constitute as a 'aberration' of nature?
A defective gene pool resulting in underdeveloped wings/ different color pigmentation?

Inter breeding amongst the genus family and sub tribes?
Could this scenario be plausible?
If it could, it would result in new specimens that are distinctively different.
It could explain the sightings of unrecorded butts and new species like the one that Yong San took.

[Commander]

What could constitute as a 'aberration' of nature?
A defective gene pool resulting in underdeveloped wings/ different color pigmentation?

Inter breeding amongst the genus family and sub tribes?
Could this scenario be plausible?
If it could, it would result in new specimens that are distinctively different.
It could explain the sightings of unrecorded butts and new species like the one that Yong San took.

Yes, an aberration would be classified as what you've described. Some species exhibit more cases of aberrations than others. For example, I was trying to photograph a Common Rose (not you, Neo! :bsmileo: ) at AH which had absolutely no white markings on the hindwings. This type of aberration seems to be more often encountered in this species.

Only the Papilionidae have been successfully interbred under some research projects, but that was the result of hand-pairing (forcing a pair to mate). There are some scientific papers on the Internet that you could search for, if you're interested. This merely demonstrates that it would be possible for the species in the family to interbreed. There have not been much success with the other families.

In the process of evolution, species can evolve into subspecies, and then later move away to become a totally distinct species. C&P4 talks about this in the text as well. But evolution can take hundreds of years or sometimes be triggered by some catastrophic event.

As to recording or observing some species which are unknown to us, there are several theories, besides aberrations :

1) escapees from Butterfly Parks. It's well known that Sentosa brings in Indonesian subspecies. These butterflies are not local to Singapore or Malaysia.
2) species coming in from neighbouring countries via plants. Singapore's landscaping projects uses quite a lot of plants from Malaysia and beyond. Any of these could be host plants which could bear cats or pupae which are inadvertently transported onto the island.
3) species coming in via transhipments. There have been stories of bananas and other fruit shipments bearing pupae of butterflies and moths hitching a ride on the fruits, and hatching upon reaching Singapore.
4) migration. These would probably happen from Malaysia and to a lesser extent, Indonesia (Riau archipelago or Sumatra).
5) forces of nature. Unnatural strong winds could also blow species across from Indonesia.

There are many other postulations, but these may be even more far-fetched than those which I believe could be more possible.

[Yong San]

Thanks everybody !!
'aberration' of nature discusion is very interesting and informative and I do learn a lot.
Regards, << Yong >>

[Viscount]

Yes, C&P4 do mention it in page 41.
There are two school of thought as to why butts evolved into sub tribes and slowly evolved onto a distinct species altogether.
One hypothetical theory was raised amongst zoologists in the latter part of the 19th century that geographical isolation could be a prerequisite for butts to evolve.
The study of cell structure(cytology) has even advanced that evolution can take place instantly.
Cytological research on butts has been carried and it was found that butts of certain species have more numbers of chromosomes than some of the butts in the same family resulting in some distinct aberrations.
Food for thoughts.