Talk:Phengaris alcon

Added couple of sentences over the classification controversy between this species and the Phengaris rebeli. NK2015 (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled[edit]

General informaion on the myrmecophilous relationship between the Lycaenidae family and Ants has been moved to Lycaenidae. Alois visagie 20:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7171196.stm If someone gets bored you can pretty much rewrite the entire article based on the referenced research by these Dutch scientists. The 'relationship' referenced in this wiki article is that the butterflies have a chemical scent that 'tricks' ants into thinking they are larvae. This scent is only active in the butterflies' larval form. They start off on a meal plant, eat it a while, then drop off and start smelling like ants. The ants come along and pick them up, thinking they are ant larvae, and bring them to their nest. The butterfly larvae are so effective at mimicking ant larvae that ants will actually feed them preferentially to their own larvae. The Alcon larvae also eat ant larvae, making them a much greater threat than a simple freeloader. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.200.116 (talk) 19:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The current version said in the second paragraph

All large blue butterflies are rare because of this interaction with ants[clarify].

without having talked about ants before; this is clearly confusing. I removed the statement since

it isn't referenced;
I severely doubt that this applies to "all large blue" butterflies; for one thing, not all large blue butterflies interact with ants.

AxelBoldt (talk) 01:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The newly-emerged adult butterfly, and its interaction with the ants.[edit]

There's a section of the article which currently states:

"Once the adult hatches it must run the gauntlet of escaping. The ants recognise the butterfly to be an intruder, but when they go to attack it with their jaws they can't grab anything substantial as the newly emerged adult butterfly is thickly clothed in loosely attached scales.[13]"

In brief, I do not believe that this is the case, and the literature (plus private correspondence with the academics I emailed) does not support this claim. I'm planning to delete it in the near-future, and wanted to give you all a heads-up.

Now, the long bit. Here is my evidence. First of all, I've checked reference [13] (Piper, Ross (2007). Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals. Greenwood Press.) to verify this claim. The book (which is a coffee-table book, not published research) does indeed state that this is the case. Furthermore, the webpage of a University of Copenhagen researcher (http://bioold.science.ku.dk/drnash/Atta/Pages/maf.html, http://bioold.science.ku.dk/drnash/Atta/Pages/LargeBl.html) also makes this claim.

However:

The book's section on alcon blue butterflies cites three research papers. None of these mentions the butterfly being in any danger from the ants, or having loose scales as a defence mechanism, or touches on the question of whether the adult butterfly is still fooling the ants with any sort of mimicry.

In fact, I have used Google Scholar to search through the literature for anything that supports this claim. Again, there is nothing in the academic literature which touches on this topic. Not even in the work co-authored by the University of Copenhagen researcher I mentioned. There's a great deal on the forms of mimicry exploited by the larvae and pupae, but nothing on any mimicry (or lack thereof) by the adult, or on what happens when it emerges.

There is footage on Youtube from BBC/Netflix documentaries in which the alcon blue and related large blue feature. While the footage of the butterfly's emergence is brief and possibly heavily edited, we don't see it being attacked by the ants.

There is at least one butterfly (Liphyra brassolis) that is recognised as an intruder, and does exploit loose scales as a defense mechanism of this sort. However, the loose scales are very visible, and distinct from e.g. the scales butterflies have on their wings anyway. There was nothing resembling them on the emerging butterflies in the Youtube videos.

Published research on three related species ("Specializations and Host Associations of Social Parasites of Ants" on P. arion and P. telejus, plus "New facts on the life history of the dusky large blue Maculinea nausithous", state that no interaction, hostile or otherwise, occurs between ants and newly-emerged adult butterflies.)

Finally, and most importantly: Two researchers (Jeremy Thomas and Judith Wardlaw) who have published a great deal of work in this area replied to my emails. Professor Thomas stated that the ants were "indifferent" to the emerging alcon blues. Dr. Wardlaw stated that this was also the case for Phengaris rebeli (The mountain alcon blue. This may in fact be the same species as P. alcon, there's a lot of controversy in the literature.) She testified that the ants did not attack Phengaris rebeli butterflies, and in fact moved away from the pupa when it opened. Dr. Wardlaw had raised several hundred P.rebeli to adulthood and closely observed their interactions with ants.

(There's a lot more detail in a biology.stackexchange posting I made some time ago; as well as the answer I later posted to it. You can see them both at https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/89284/the-emergence-of-phengaris-butterflies-from-ant-nests/)

The University of Copenhagen researcher did not reply to my emails (I waited several weeks.)

In brief, there is no real evidence to support this claim of the adult butterflies being attacked by the ants, and quite a lot of evidence that they are not. I therefore intend to delete this claim from the article in a few days' time, but I'm posting here first in case anyone knows of a good reason not to.

AstridRedfern (talk) 20:49, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]