Great Mormon Butterfly in Hong Kong

AJP photographed this Great Mormon Butterfly (Papilio mormon) in the garden in May. He has seen large numbers of this large butterfly (around 5 inches -125 mm) this year.

Females are highly polymorphic. In some parts of southern Asia the females mimic toxic butterflies. The fact that the males have the choice of a number of different female forms within an area seems to have been responsible for their common name of ‘mormon’.

Great Mormons figured in one of the key papers on mimicry and its evolution. Ian Thornton (1926-2002) then Reader in Zoology in the University of Hong Kong sent specimens to Liverpool for breeding experiments and was a co-author of the paper with Sir Cyril Clarke (1907-2000) and Philip Shepherd (1921-1976) which was published in Transactions of the Royal Society in 1968.

I only discovered that Ian Thornton had been involved in work on the genetics of the Great Mormon when writing this note. I then recalled something odd about the department of zoology in those days. I never recall a single internal seminar. External visitors and talks by a host of distinguished scientists calling in Hong Kong, yes; but talks by staff and PhD students on what they were doing, no.

Clarke CA, Sheppard PM, Thornton IWB. 1968. The genetics of the mimetic butterfly Papilio memnon L.. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 254 37–89. doi:10.1098rstb.1968.0013

ANIMALS Magazine. Back to the 60s

 

ANIMALS magazine was launched in January 1963 by Purnell & Sons as a weekly. The editor was John Paget Chancellor (1927-2014) but television personalities were used as ‘influencers’ then as now, and the film maker Armand Denis was listed as Editor-in-Chief. For those not around then, Armand and Michaela Denis produced and presented On Safari, a hugely popular programme on BBC television in the 1950s. Not content with a celebrity editor-in-chief, Chancellor assembled  a collection of well-known naturalists and scientists as ‘patrons’ and ‘advisory editors’ (Julian Huxley, Solly Zuckerman, (13th) Duke of Bedford, Bernhard Grzimek, Gavin Maxwell, Peter Scott, Gerald Durrell, Nicholas Guppy, Alan Moorehead, Niko Tinbergen).

As well as articles ANIMALS ran extracts of books. It had an important role in drawing attention in Britain to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which it began publishing extracts soon after its launch and only four months after the book was first published in the USA.

At the time of its launch as a colour glossy, Purnells were in their heyday. However, it seems that ANIMALS was, by the mid-60s, not doing well; it is said that it ran at a loss for its four years with Purnell. In 1967 the magazine was bought by one of the assistant editors, Nigel Degge Wilmot Sitwell (1935-2017), who changed it to a monthly and cut the costs of production. Then in 1974 he changed the title to WILDLIFE. The magazine was sold to Reader’s Digest in 1978, then via another publisher to become BBC WILDLIFE which is still extant but which I have not seen for years. Nigel Sitwell, whom I got to know slightly 30-odd years ago, moved to other publishing, travel and conservation interests in Antarctica and the Galapagos.

Copies of ANIMALS are difficult to search for, given the title. It was, however, an important popular publication of its time and well worth reading as a source of what was going on in the world of animals and conservation in the 1960s.

Feral Gecko Populations in British University Buildings

Escapes and deliberate releases have been responsible for the occurrence of feral populations non-native amphibians and reptiles in Britain, ranging from Midwife Toads to Aesculapian Snakes. Tropical and sub-tropical species sometimes escape in heated, indoor accommodation but rarely in sufficient numbers to produce a breeding population. However, it does happen, as a recent paper illustrates.

Two feral populations of gecko have been found in buildings at the University of Hull and the University of Nottingham. The date when they were first noticed seems to be the late 1990s-early 2000s in Hull and the 1970s in Nottingham. Both populations have been identified as Hemidactylus turcicus, the Mediterranean House Gecko or Turkish Gecko, which, as its names implies is found in countries bordering virtually the entire Mediterranean coast. It is, like many geckos, nocturnal. However, like some others in the genus, it is now to be found found in other parts of the world where it has been introduced, probably in shipments of goods. It is, for example, found in the USA and Mexico and said to be abundant in Florida.

Molecular genetic studies suggested the Nottingham population is derived from a single or very few founding individuals. Those studied from the Hull population showed greater genetic diversity, suggesting a larger number in the founder population and/or evolution in situ.

The authors speculate that the two populations were established by individuals being kept by people as part of research projects. It may be that the individuals involved are known—or could be guessed—at one site or the other but ‘no names, no pack drill’ may apply.

In Britain, it is difficult to imagine sub-tropical or tropical reptiles becoming established in buildings, other than in those heated all day, every day, in the winter in the decades before the 1970s. Laboratory buildings were often freezing cold in vacations and at weekends—far too cold for most reptiles to survive let along breed and thrive. 

Just in case anybody is asking, have I left feral populations behind in the buildings I once kept reptiles? I do not think so but their food supply was a different matter: crickets, locusts and fruitflies and flour beetles were some of the escapees. In the one building still standing, the crickets may still be there.

Da Silva S-M, Maka A, Hartman T, Valero KW, Gilbert E. 2024. Two established introduced populations of the synanthropic gecko Hemidactylus turcicus (Linnaeus, 1758) in England. Herpetology Notes 17, 407-410