The record of Colias palaeno (Linnaeus, 1761) (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) from Sussex - an alternative view, with notes on the dispersal of the natural history content of the Borough of Lewes Museum

摘要

Colias palaeno has been included in several recent books on British butterflies as a result of the report and exhibit, at the annual exhibition of the South London Entomological and Natural History Society in 1928, of a solitary specimen collected by H. S. Fuller near Lewes in the 1920s. No published descriptions or figures of this specimen were found but, after searching the borough of Lewes Museum archives and making contact with the Fuller family, evidence was uncovered that the specimen was extant in the collection of the late H. S. Fuller when it was donated to the Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton, in 1998. Unfortunately, however, the specimen does not appear to be present in the museum collections and it must be assumed that it has been lost. It is considered highly unlikely that the butterfly was in fact C. palaeno and the possibility of it having been an aberration or form of C. croceus is discussed.