Catopsilia florella (Fabricius 1775)

Four days into national insect week, it seems as though it would be atrocious if I allowed the long-standing funk I seem to be in to stop me from posting something appropriate.

I had planned a lengthy discourse with tons of pictures of invertebrates, but focusing on anything lately has not been very doable (you may have noticed, in the unlikely event that you read through it, that the lengthy taxonomic notes have disappeared from recent posts. Which makes navigation harder, but saves about half an hour of distractedly re-doing the same thing.

Anyway, whining over, meet today's guest:

Lusaka City, Lusaka Province, Zambia, in October 2011. Photographed with Olympus E-420 DSLR, Zuiko 40-150mm lens and 3 KOOD magnifiers.

This soft-touch of an entry to a blog supposedly focusing on under-loved groups (in my defence, it was suggested by a random number generator) is one of Zambia's many Agulugufe (Chewa - plural of gulugufe), but is far from endemic; it extends through most of Africa, including island nations such as Madagascar and the Canary islands - which, having remained a territory (=colony) of Spain, is often used by entomologists to say that the butterfly is found in Europe. A little bit like saying that penguins breed on British shores when they're actually in the Falklands, but I digress.

This gulugufe is also found as far east as India and Sri Lanka (பட்டாம், ~Pattaam in Tamil; तितली, ~Dtidt(a)li in Hindi), and just in case you hadn't worked it out from the picture, the English term is Butterfly. 






As an etymological aside, one Chewa term for these distinctly user-friendly insects is Peperu, which is, to my ears at least, surprisingly close to the French Papillon.

As with a lot of insects which are not particularly edible, a common name specific to the species is difficult to find in Chewa; the most direct translation from the English '[African] Migrant' I can find is Matchona, which means migrant workers, and, by its structure and the persistent use of Zimbabwe in the example usages, would seem to refer even more specifically to members of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, who make up a considerable proportion of migrant workers in Zambia and Malawi.

So I am forced to think more broadly for a Chewa name to reflect the nature of these insects; Mlendo, which translates most directly to Guest, but can also mean Stranger, Tourist, Foreigner or Traveller, seems the most appropriate.

Our Mlendo Gulugufe can be referred to, internationally, as

Catopsilia florella

(Fabricius, 1775)

Within the butterflies, it is in a generally not white subfamily (Coliadinae) of the 'White' Butterflies (gugulufe loyera), the Pieridae, of which only one other butterfly has thus far been featured, the also not-white (but in the largely white-ish subfamily, Pierinae) Eurasian Orange-Tip, Anthocharis cardamines. 

Same as opening image, but only 1 KOOD magnifier.

As with most butterflies, there is sexual dimorphism (males and females look different), but with the Mlendo Gugulufe it is imperfect; while the individual to the right(the same one pictured at the top of the post) shows a colour form found in both males and females, the more cryptic colouring  of the specimen below is only known from females. 

Photographed in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, in February 2013, using Olympus E-420 DSLR and 40-150mm Zuiko lens with 1 KOOD magnifier.

And that, folks, is all.

For the identification of large and distinctive African butterflies, the most comprehensive guide I've found affordable is Steve Woodhall's Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa, published through Struik and available through Amazon (here). As I remain the world's biggest fan of free information, I can't go without mentioning the late R. C. Dening's collection, which, although not as user friendly, is more appropriate to Zambia and, key point, freely accessible online (click here to visit it).