Colias chlorocoma is a butterfly in the family Pieridae found in Transcaucasia, Turkey and Iran.
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."Julius Röber in Seitz, A. 1906 The Macrolepidoptera of the world; a systematic description of the hitherto known Macrolepidoptera Volume 1 The Palearctic Butterflies Stuttgart : Seitz'schen (Kernen) Treated as a species of Colias Fabricius, 1807 by Tuzov et al.Tuzov et al., 1997 Guide to the butterflies of Russia and adjacent territories. Volume 1. Pensoft, Sofia - Moscow.
Grieshuber & Gerardo Lamas consider that C. chlorocoma is very closely related to and possibly conspecific 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 Rusinsects Colias chlorocoma images at Consortium for the Barcode of Life verso