Is there anything against Port Famine as the locality for Colias ponteni?

Is there something that argues against Port Famine as a collection site for Colias ponteni?

Something that could possibly speak against Port Famine as a collection site for the butterfly is the date when the butterflies would have been caught, within a day or two of February 1st. This seems quite late in the "summer" in these areas. When you look at the five specimens of Colias ponteni we have in Sweden you can do some thinking. Four of the specimens are in surprisingly good condition. They are not very worn or “shabby” as we entomologists usually say about butterflies that have flown for a long time after hatching and thus collected at the end of their lives. Those of the butterflies examined more closely looking for any pollen from the plants visited showed that no pollen was found on the feet or wings of these specimens. All in all, this suggests that the specimens were collected at the beginning of their flight period. The exception is possibly the one in Wallengren´s own museum. However, the damage to this specimen is such that the damage was connected and caused by the handling of the butterfly after its capture.

Eugenie's logbook states that if they were collected on Eugenie's visit to Port Famine, this would have happened on February 1st, 1852. As we are in the southern hemisphere, this corresponds to August 1st in the northern hemisphere. The southern latitude of the Strait of Magellan corresponds climatically to central or northern Germany. Southernmost South America lacks both a warm ocean current like our Gulf Stream and the predominantly warm south-westerly winds that are constantly pumping up warm air from the Atlantic to north-western Europe. However, as I see it, the late summer climate in February at the Strait of Magellan and our August/September climate in northern Scandinavia, correspond in any case. Based on such a comparison, with regard to the condition of the butterflies, and a collection time of February 1st, i.e. about August 1st in the northern hemisphere, slightly late or even too late! My own Arctic Colias butterflies, both from Lapland in northern Sweden and from the locals at Novaya Semlja, Tajmyr peninsula and Wrangel-island in northern Siberia, as well as the specimens from Alaska and eastern Greenland, optimally all fly in early July. If you find any butterflies in August, these are usually worn and “shabby”. At the Natural History Museum in Stockholm there is a faded, almost white Colias vauthierii cunninghamii which was collected at Tierra del Fuego on January 1, 1896, in other words a month earlier that year than when Kinberg and Andersson visited Mt Tarn.

Of course, we know nothing at all about how this strange relic butterfly lives. It may even have a twoyear life cycle, something that might explain the late flight time? An interesting fact is that the very careful observer Charles Darwin, during his visit to the Port Famine areas in February 1834, i.e. the same month as Kinberg and Andersson visited Mt Tarn, no Colias ponteni were observed. Darwin collected butterflies during his visit and would certainly have observed this very eye-catching butterfly if there was indeed a specimen to see.

The "imperialis butterflies" that are found in the British Museum seem somewhat more worn than the syntype at the National Museum in Stockholm and also Samuel Pontén's own specimens now in the Evolutionary Museum in Uppsala. This may perhaps be explained to some extent by the fact that they have long been kept in a herbarium in the Bank's cabinet, but probably should be explained by the fact that they could have been taken during a later part of the butterfly's flight-time than the butterflies Wallengren described as Colias ponteni.