Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of EssaysWallace, Alfred Russel
Science
Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of Essays
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Natural selection
Papilio Pammon offers a somewhat similar case. The female was described
by Linnaeus as P. Polytes, and was considered to be a distinct species
till Westermann bred the two from the same larvae (see Boisduval,
"Species General des Lepidopteres," p. 272). They were therefore classed
as sexes of one species by Mr. Edward Doubleday, in his "Genera of
Diurnal Lepidoptera," in 1846. Later, female specimens were received
from India closely resembling the male insect, and this was held to
overthrow the authority of M. Westermann's observation, and to
re-establish P. Polytes as a distinct species; and as such it
accordingly appears in the British Museum List of Papilionidae in 1856,
and in the Catalogue of the East India Museum in 1857. This discrepancy
is explained by the fact of P. Pammon having two females, one closely
resembling the male, while the other is totally different from it. A
long familiarity with this insect (which replaced by local forms or by
closely allied species, occurs in every island of the Archipelago) has
convinced me of the correctness of this statement; for in every place
where a male allied to P. Pammon is found, a female resembling P.
Polytes also occurs, and sometimes, though less frequently than on the
continent, another female closely resembling the male: while not only
has no male specimen of P. Polytes yet been discovered, but the female
(Polytes) has never yet been found in localities to which the male
(Pammon) does not extend. In this case, as in the last, distinct
species, local forms, and dimorphic specimens, have been confounded
under the common appellation of varieties.
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