A new wing pattern mutant in the Apollo butterfly, Parnassius apollo (L. 1758) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae)

A spontaneous mutation, 'Pseudozorro', has arisen in 1998 in a captive brood of P. apollo maintained by the authors. It induces (i) the production of additional wing veins, (ii) the distortion and confluence of the black spots of the forewing discal cell and (iii) a reduction of the hindwing eyespots and, more generally, of all red components of the wing pattern. Various crosses demonstrated that 'Pseudozorro' is dominant and lethal when homozygote. Its expression is quite variable, probably due to epistatic interactions with other loci. When combined with the recessive mutation 'wiskotti', it rather attenuates its manifestations; the two loci are not linked.