Pieris brassicae wollastoni

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Kingdom Animalia

 

A female Madeiran Large White (Pieris wollastoni, plate 1, fig 1) from the book 'The butterflies and moths of Teneriffe', by A. E. Holt-White and edited by Rashleigh Holt White. Illustrated from the author's drawings. Published in 1894. This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the European Union, Canada, the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

Phylum Tracheophyta
Class Insecta
Order Lepidoptera
Family Pieridae
Subfamily Pierinae
Tribe Pierini
Genus Pieris
Species Pieris brassicae
Subspecies Pieris brassicae wollastoni
Authority (Butler, 1886)
 
English Name Madeiran Large White
Danish Name Madeira Stor Kålsommerfugl
Dutch Name Madeira Groot Koolwitje
German Name Madeira Großer Kohlweißling
Portuguese Name Grande Branca da Madeira
Swedish Name Madeira Kålfjäril
 
Synonyms Pieris wollastoni Butler 1886; Pieris cheiranti wollastoni (Butler 1886)
 
Comments The Latin name commemorate Thomas Vernon Wollaston, an entomologist who has discovered several insect taxa on Madeira (Wikipedia contributors 2007c).
 
Characteristics The Madeiran Large White can reach a size from 55 to 65 millimetres. The wings are pure white with a wide black tip on the apexes of the forewings. (Wikipedia contributors 2007c)
 
Range & Habitat This butterfly was endemic to Madeira (Portugal) and found in north facing valleys in the Laurisilva forests (Van Swaay & Warren 2000). Laurisilva forests are an endemic type of humid subtropical laurel forest found on several of the Macaronesian islands of the North Atlantic such as the Madeira Islands, a precious relic of the Pliocene subtropical forests (Wikipedia contributors 2007b). This species had a highly restricted distribution (Van Swaay & Warren 2000). 

Image: map showing Madeira (surrounded by red) where the Madeiran large white occurred. This map has been based on a Wikimedia Commons image and is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
 
History & Population In the 1970s this species was considered to be rare, but after 1980 it was found to be more widely distributed. Its numbers had decreased sharply in recent years. (Van Swaay & Warren 2000) Conservationists have spent 15 years combing its home territory but have been unable to find it and in November 2007 the butterfly has been declared extinct at a conference on 29 and 31 October 2007 in Laufen, Germany (Smith 2007).
 
Extinction Causes The Madeiran Large White had suffered a terminal decline because of loss of habitat to the construction of new businesses and homes, including holiday homes. Pollution from agricultural fertilisers was also likely to have played a part the extinction of this butterfly. (Smith 2007) There has also been an estimated decrease in the distribution area of at least 80% over the last 25 years which equates to an 80% population reduction over the last ten years (Van Swaay & Warren 2000).
 
Conservation Attempts Much of the remaining forest area on Madeira has been nominated as a World Heritage Site (Van Swaay & Warren 2000).
 
Museum Specimens Do you know any museum specimens? Please contact us.
 
Relatives The Large White is common throughout Europe, North Africa and Asia to the Himalayas (Wikipedia contributors 2007a). The nominate subspecies Pieris brassicae brassicae (Linnaeus, 1758) is its closest living relative.

Photo: a Large White male, taken by James K. Lindsey in Commanster, Belgian High Ardennes (2004). This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.
 
Links

Madeiran Large White - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: Pieris wollastoni

 

References

(Complete website)

 Smith, L. 2007. Man drives butterfly into extinction and it could be bad news for us too. The Times (3 November 2007). Available online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2796656.ece.

Van Swaay, C.A.M. & Warren, M.S. 2000. Pieris wollastoni. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 17 November 2007.

Wikipedia contributors. 2007a. "Large White," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Large_White&oldid=172075276 (accessed November 17, 2007).

Wikipedia contributors. 2007b. "Laurisilva," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laurisilva&oldid=168431758 (accessed November 17, 2007).

Wikipedia contributors. 2007c. "Madeiran Large White," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madeiran_Large_White&oldid=172088362 (accessed November 17, 2007).

Last updated: 26th December 2008.

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