''Colias chlorocoma '' is a

butterfly Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossi ...

in the family

Pieridae The Pieridae are a large family (biology), family of butterflies with about 76 genera containing about 1,100 species, mostly from Afrotropical realm, tropical Africa and Indomalayan realm, tropical Asia with some varieties in the more northern ...

found in

Transcaucasia The South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia or the Transcaucasus, is a geographical region on the border of Eastern Europe and West Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Armenia, ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Taxonomy

Originally described as ''Colias chlorocoma'' Christoph, 1888. Röber considered ''C. chlorocoma'' to be an apparently very rare, local form of '' Colias libanotica''- "''C''. ''chlorocoma'' Christ., from Southern Armenia (Kasikoparan), is presumably a local form of ''libanotica'' ; it is large, the ground-colour being greenish in the male, white in the female. Apparently very rare." Treated as a species of ''Colias'' Fabricius, 1807 by Tuzov et al. Grieshuber & Gerardo Lamas consider that ''C. chlorocoma'' is very closely related to and possibly

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with '' Colias sagartia'' but androconial spots are rare in ''chlorocoma'' and males have yellow spots in the marginal band. The flight, the biotopes, and the foodplants of the two taxa are identical. ''C. chlorocoma'' is rather variable, in particular the green wing pigmentation differs from population to population but is usually greenish-yellow, ''C. sagartia'' is greenish. Oorschot, H. & Wagener, S. treat all the subspecies as junior synonymsOorschot, H. & Wagener, S. 1995 ''Die Tagfalter der Türkei unter Berücksichtigung der angrenzenden Länder.'' Bocholt, Sigbert Wagener. 3 vols.

Subspecies

*''Colias chlorocoma chlorocoma'' (Turkey) *''Colias chlorocoma aladagensis'' Verhulst, 1993 (Turkey) *''Colias chlorocoma tkatschukovi'' O. Bang-Haas, 1936 (Armenia, Azerbaijan) *''Colias chlorocoma wyatti'' Häuser & Schurian, 1978 (Iran)

References

*Joseph T. Verhulst (English translation R. Leestmans, editing E. Benton and R. Leestmans), 2000 ''Les Colias du Globe'' translation ''Monograph of the genus Colias'' Keltern, Germany : Goecke & Evers

External links

''Colias chlorocoma'' von J. Fuchs ''Colias chlorocoma'' images
at

Consortium for the Barcode of Life The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) was an international initiative dedicated to supporting the development of DNA barcoding as a global standard for species identification. CBOL's Secretariat Office is hosted by the National Museum of ...

verso chlorocoma Butterflies of Asia Butterflies described in 1888 Butterflies of Europe Taxa named by Hugo Theodor Christoph {{pieridae-stub