Hawaii or Port Famine? Which factors argue for and against these places?

Hawaii or Port Famine? What factors speak for and against these sites?

For Port Famine on the Strait of Magellan:

1. That the Colias imperialis butterflies, described by Butler 1871, are said to have been found in the Banksian cabinet, among collected material from Captain King's expedition to the area at South America's southern tip 40 years earlier. However, there is great doubt about this "accepted truth"

2. The obvious disarray that was at hand regarding many of the collected specimens on the expedition (animals and plants). The statement of Oahu as a capture site could then also be incorrect.

3. That Kinberg really found 5 but maybe even 8 fully-educated for the science so far unknown Colias butterflies and also a parasitized pupa during his walk towards Mt Tarn together with Andersson on February 1, 1852. This is the accepted "truth" of virtually all "experts" who pronounced on the issue. However, this presumptive scenario seems quite incredible as neither Kinberg nor Andersson were any entomologists and no one after nearly 170 years found the butterfly in this area. The fact that they found a parasitized pupa during this excursion also seems extremely unlikely.

4. The hypothesis that Kinberg could have found a larval-colony on the way to Mount Tarn during his excursion there with Master Andersson on February 1st 1852 has been launched based on my find of the parasitized pupa in Uppsala. Kinberg had then probably left the care of these caterpillars or pupae to Samuel Pontén who had them in his cabin where they pupated, and then when the frigate Eugenie arrived at Hawaii in midsummer of 1852, at least five butterflies would have hatched from the pupae while one pupa had been parasitized. They were all taken care of by Samuel Pontén. This and two of the newly hatched males Samuel Pontén gave to his brother in Strängnäs while a male and a female were handed over to the Academy of Sciences and are now available as syntypes for Colias ponteni at the Swedish Royal Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The fifth specimen was given to Wallengren in connection with describing the butterfly in 1860. That Samuel Pontén was commissioned to take care of a larval colony is probably not so strange since he being the ship's priest had a strong position on the frigate with probably a better cabin and better opportunities to be able to take care of the larvae than anyone else on the frigate, and that he also had a personal interest in trying to see what these larvae could do on his brothers behalf. This could also explain why both Kinberg and Pontén in Wallengren's description of the species stand as collectors of the butterfly. It could also explain why Wallengren gave the butterfly this name as recognition of his efforts.

I thought this hypothesis was very farfetched but the more I think about it, it does not seem quite so incredible. A problem with this hypothesis is that now one has found an egg-shell on the empty parasitized pupa which should suggest that Kinberg found all the specimens as pupae, is something that must be considered very unlikely! One possibility, however, might be that the pupa had been attacked by a parasite fly aboard the frigate Eugenie. With that scenario the question will be from where did the parasite fly come from? The same hypothesis, however, could be even more credible for Oahu as the butterfly's source. In that case, the hypothesis would be even more credible!

The most important argument against this hypothesis, however, is the time when the larvae were found, namely February 1st, which means late summer. That these larvae were then so developed that they were able to pupate and then hatch in Pontén's cabin seems totally unlikely. It must also be considered quite unlikely that Pontén could for some time have been able to breed the larvae in his cabin with fresh plants. That he would have been able to find suitable food for these larvae near the beach since Eugenie left Port Famine also appears completely unlikely.

The only possibility to safely solve this question as I see it now would probably be if it could be possible to find out which plant the pupa is attached to. However, in order to safely get a comprehensive answer to this question, it would have to be that this plant would either only be found along the Strait of Magellan or only on the Hawaiian Islands.

5. That Pontén, who was an enterprising person, in some way, has obtained these five butterflies from someone in Port Famine during his visit there but that he himself did not have anything to do with the actual collection. This seems extremely far-fetched but cannot be completely excluded and in that case would support Shapiro's hypothesis that the butterflies were collected further north as follows: "in steppe habitat father north, perhaps at the classical ‘Cabo Negro’ or near ‘Punta Delgada’". I can very well imagine that Samuel Pontén would have been able to pay a lot to get these butterflies if he was offered to buy them from someone during his visit to Port Famine. But the question that you have to ask yourself in that case is, who had made this collection and how did this unknown man have knowledge that on the frigate there was a ship's priest with an interest in a purchase?

For Hawaii, Oahu and Honolulu:

1. That Pontén, possibly together with Kinberg, are the only people who actually say they have seen the butterfly alive and claim to have collected the butterflies and that this happened on Oahu on Honolulu. Did Wallengren receive this information from both or only one of these gentlemen?

2. That Pontén, who was obviously somehow involved in the gathering of the butterflies, was probably not even ashore during the visit to Port Famine, so this possibility should be excluded. See the letter from Christer Hägg (Appendix 4).

3. A relatively strong correlation between isotope-examined butterflies from Hawaii and Samuel Pontén's collected Colias ponteni. Significantly lower correlation with the Colias butterflies, Colias vautherii cunninghamii, collected near the Strait of Magellan by Hiroshi Hara.

4. Colias ponteni’s relatively bright abdomen and the relatively bright areas of the hindwings at the inner edge towards the abdomen. This is something that is often common in butterflies in warm areas where it is not so important to use solar heat to warm the abdomen. The abdomen of Colias vauthierii cunninghamii, flying at the Strait of Magellan, is somewhat darker.

5. The most closely related Colias species in appearance with androconial patches on the hindwings, Colias fieldii, can be found in northeastern Asia from Ussuri to northern Vietnam. This species is part of the migratory "croesus group" which would also possibly speak for Colias ponteni coming from Asia. The males of the North American Colias butterflies all lack the androconial patches so typical for Colias ponteni. But here I have to note that the Colias vauthierii which fly in South Chile and on Tierra del Fuego also has small androconial patches. The two other endemic butterflies on Hawaii, Vanessa tameamea och Udara (Vaga) blackburni has also their closest relatives from the same area in East Asia as Colias fieldii.

6. The butterfly is now most likely extinct. The likelihood of rapid eradication due to human activity must be much larger in Oahu than along the Strait of Magellan.

7. In the BMNH, there are 3 Colias ponteni, two of which carry labels “Sandwitsch Inseln” and the third “Hono-lulu”. Only three of the total of eleven existing specimens of Colias ponteni carry the “Port Famine” label. These three labels have been written by Butler based on pure assumptions when he himself lacked knowledge of where the butterflies he found in the Banksian cabinet were collected and also by whom. Butler, in the description of "Colias imperialis", even put a question mark (?) after the locality declaration “Port Famine".

One might wonder if Joseph Banks knew about these three butterflies. Perhaps Joseph Banks, as an old friend of James Cook, could have obtained the plants and among these the accompanying butterflies from the natural wild collected material that may have been made in Hawaii during the visits before Cook was later unfortunately murdered on his third visit. I suppose Joseph Banks met James Cook's ship Resolution when it returned to England in late 1779. This could also explain why these butterflies were in Joseph Bank's cabinet when Butler found them there ninety years later! Joseph Banks, who himself was a very dedicated and great natural collector, was in fact on Cook's first world tour with HMS Endeavour 1768 - 1771 and of course he knew Cook very well. The fact that the Colias imperialis butterflies could come from James Cook's third Pacific voyage is just my own speculation as I try to cover all possiblities when and where these three specimens were collected and how it might be that they were in the so-called Banksian cabinet.

However, there is a big snag with this hypothesis! James Cook did indeed visit the Hawaiian Islands for quite some time, from the time he discovered the islands on January 18, 1778, until he was murdered on February 14, 1779. However, James Cook did not remain in Hawaii during this entire time. Cook's main task with this long voyage on his ship Resolution was to try to find the Northwest Passage north of North America, which is why, as soon as the weather was judged to be more favorable, he set off for the Bering Strait via the North American coast from California to Alaska in the spring of 1778. He first returned to the Hawaiian Islands on January 17, 1779 when he was welcomed as a God. What happened next, until he was murdered just a month later on February 14, those interested in James Cook and his travels will know, but it is too much to describe here.

The question is, however, what do we know about any plants collected on the Hawaiian Islands during the winter months Cook was there in 1778 and 1779, but above all did any collection occur during the summer months was Cook was on the Resolution? Maybe some natives engaged in collecting plants during this time? Everyone has obviously accepted that these plants, where the butterflies were found, were really collected at Port Famine. I ask myself, where are these plants now? I can ask the same question to the Natural History Museum in Stockholm, which emptied Strängnäs´ High School of all the plants that Samuel Pontén collected for his brother at this school. Is there a species list of these plants at the National Museum? Are any of these Pontén´s plants collected in Hawaii or at Port Famine? The latter question I have often asked myself but unfortunately could not get an answer to. As for the plants among which the butterflies were located, Butler probably had found some sort of label with the information: "Port Famine (King) Coll Banks". In any case, these labels may not have been written by Banks himself. Captain King first visited the Strait of Magellan in 1821, i.e. a year after Joseph Bank's death in 1820. However, do we really know that the plants were collected during Captain King's visit to Port Famine?

However, what mainly suggests the fact that these three "imperialis butterflies" would come from Cook's visit is the time, i.e. “winter months” January and February which is when James Cook visited the islands. Currently I see that the biggest snag with this hypothesis is that Colias ponteni can hardly have flown both in January / February and during the high summer of June / July when Eugenie visited the islands. However, I cannot free myself from the fact that something in Butler's text in his appendix to the species description is incorrect. What does it mean that he writes that he found them: “From the supplementary cases in the Banksian cabinet in company with a collection from Port Famine presented by Capt. King.” However, I note that there is nothing to say that the "collection" would be about plants, although I also find it most likely.

If we now assume that the butterflies originate from Hawaii, then something must be wrong in Butler's conclusion that the butterflies originate from Captain King and Port Famine. Why were these plants and butterflies at all in the Banksian cabinet? Banks had been dead for 50 years before Butler found the butterflies and described them. One would very much like to know which other friends of Joseph Banks who, after Cook's tragic death in 1779 and up to Bank's death in 1821, i.e. visited Hawaii during these forty years. There is something suspect about these three locality labels "Port Famine (King) Coll Banks" I definitely think there is!

I have included the above doubts regarding the three butterflies Butler found in Bank's old collections under this heading 7 "For Hawaii" because even Butler himself wrote a question mark (?) regarding the local name: Port Famine. This could possibly also speak for Hawaii.

8. We have a statement by Skogman that Samuel Pontén and Master Andersson made an excursion to Honolulu's surroundings where Pontén may well have collected his "ponteni-butterflies".

9. That the butterfly has not been found in the area around the Strait of Magellan despite intensive searching for over more than 165 years. Although these searches have taken place in recent years, why would this butterfly have been eradicated earlier?

10. That Mt Tarn, which many people considered to be the most likely place for “Colias imperialis”, considering both Charles Darwin's and Hiroshi Hara's descriptions and analysis and also Daniel Rosengren's pictures, with its cloud-forest and bare mountain slopes above, should not constitute a place where this relic could exist and survive for very long.

11. It is not at all unlikely that the “imperialis-butterflies”, even though they were found among materials brought back from Commander King's expedition to Port Famine, could have been collected on Oahu. The sailing ships that sailed home to England from Hawaii using the shortest route around South America nearly always passed through the Strait of Magellan and anchored at Port Famine or Punta Arenas. If we now assume that Butler's described “imperialis-butterflies” come from Hawaii these can, as I see it, easily have been confused with material from Port Famine or Punta Arenas when the ship arrived to those places but more probably when the ship arrived to England. Given that nobody knows who had collected the "imperialis butterflies" that Butler found, it seems to me extremely strange that his assumption by most members of the "collective science" for more than 100 years was considered more credible than Kinberg and Pontén's statements to Wallengren that the two themselves had collected their Colias ponteni specimens in Hawaii!

12. The analysis I made of the labels found on the three butterflies at the BMNH that were not described by Butler shows that the handwriting on the labels "Sandwitsch Inseln" corresponds well with the label "Colias ponteni" Wallengren had written on the name-label for the female he described as Colias ponteni. Added to this is that the female that was in the Rothschild's private collection, that originates from Felder's collection, carries exactly the same type of label "Hono-lulu" as Wallengren's syntypes of Colias ponteni at the Royal Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. All of this suggests that it is quite possible that all these three specimens originate from the collecting that took place on Eugenie's voyage! All these specimens are also in much better condition than the “imperialisspecimens” except Wallengren´s own example but that I am rather sure depends on the handling of that specimen.

13. If we now assume that during this trip, at the same time, eight examples of this special butterfly were collected and, in addition, a parasitized pupa, the hypothesis that the collection of specimens took place at the end of the larval stage appears. This would also fit well with the time, Midsummer, when the visit was made to Honolulu in 1852. The caterpillars should then have been ready to pupate If now Kinberg or Pontén found these larvae or pupae, it would be most likely that Pontén had been given responsibility for them and later during the voyage to Tahiti seen them hatched to adult butter-flies. All these specimens are relatively fresh, unlike the butterflies Butler found in the herbarium in the Banksian cabinet. The localization "Tahiti" would then be able to get an explanation. Besides, there is nothing in Wallengren's description that Kinberg and Pontén found the butterfly near Honolulu on Oahu as adult butterflies, although of course everyone including myself took this as being obvious.

A comment:

I can of course see a scenario that Kinberg found these larvae or pupae, a total of nine examples in Honolulu and then let Samuel Pontén take care of them and that he then managed to hatch eight fresh adults on the frigate Eugenie - quite hypothetical - almost too good to be true - But how else could we explain that on this single visit to Honolulu, that no less than eight fine specimens and a pupa of this butterfly had been found which no one had previously recorded or ever found? Does anyone have a better theory?

If we now assume that Kinberg or Pontén found this larval colony, then the distribution between the sexes is quite acceptable. We must assume that these gentlemen took with them all the larvae or pupae they saw why 5 or maybe 6 males and 3 or 4 females would be a reasonable distribution between the sexes. As I write this, myself and no one else knows the sex of the parasitized pupa. Maybe the DNA studies can also answer that?