Sex ratio of apollo butterfly Parnassius apollo (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) - facts and artifacts

The adult sex ratio among the genus Parnassius is usually strongly male biased and close to 2: 1. This paper presents the results of comparative studies, on the basis of data from wild and captive reared populations of apollo butterfly in the Pieniny National Park (Western Carpathians, Poland). Sex ratio among the wild population is strongly male biased and close to 2: 1, whereas there was no sex ratio bias among the captive population. However, among the captive individuals caught after releasing into the wild, males significantly outnumbered females. There was a significant, sex-related, difference in activity pattern recorded in the field studies: while the majority of females were observed sitting, males were usually flying. This result suggests that the observed sex ratio shifting is at least partially an artifact caused by the more cryptic behaviour of females. The sex ratio bias was more pronounced in the wild population than in captive individuals caught after releasing into wild, which suggests that difference in detectability between the sexes is not the only reason for males outnumbering females.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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