New butterfly species discovered on ski slopes

tel aviv - Russian researchers, for the first time in Israel, discovered a new butterfly species with orange, black-winged wings in Israel for over a hundred years. The bug was found in the ski resort on Hermon Mountain and is described in the Comparative Cytogenetics magazine. Those, as the official name is, is probably 1 to 1.6 million years old.

'To me it was a surprise that this butterfly had not been discovered yet,' said Russian entomologist and evolutionary biologist Vladimir Loechtanov of the zoological institute in St. Petersburg. 'Thousands of people have seen this beautifully colored butterfly and often photographed. But no-one has realized that it is about its own kind. '

The cause of this is the great resemblance to the common Melitaea persea. As a result, no one came up with the idea of ​​laying this 'pistil butterfly' under the microscope and genetically determining it. Until Loechtanov launched a comprehensive survey of Israeli butterflies. One of his students, Asia Novikova, gained some copies on the Golan-height with which 'something strange' was. DNA analysis showed that this butterfly clearly distinguished from the 'persea'.