The West Virginia White Butterfly - "Pieris Virginiensis"

Hello lovely Hiveans !

Today I want to publish my first post into the Insects Of The World Community that was founded just a week ago and is there for all your great posts about the world of insects around you, accompanied by explanations and interesting facts about them ^^ .. For this reason I choose to present to you the Green-Veined White Butterfly (Pieris Virginiensis).

Scientific Classification of Pieris Virginiensis:

I find this species especially interesting as at first I was sure that this beautiful creamy colored insect had to be a moth, but it showed that this species is indeed a butterfly. Both, moths and butterflies, belong to the order of Lepidoptera, but the family of Pieridae belongs to the butterflies ^^ [1,2] .. This actually surprised me a bit, but with more than 180 Thousand different species of the order and about 125 different families it is easy to get confused there 😱

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera - Butterflies and Moths (with 180 Thousand Species!)
Family: Pieridae - Only Butterflies (with 1100 Species)
Genus: Pieris
Species: Pieris Virginiensis

Distribution of the Butterfly:

It is a bit surprising to me that I found this butterfly here in Germany as it is usually only located in North America. [3] .. So how did it came over here? .. I actually do not know, but I assume that it was shipped in here over the ocean and started to populate in Western Europe too. Yeah, another beauty to be found around here 😁

Places of spread: North America - alongside the Appalachians (but NOT Europe ?!)

Common Appearance:

This butterfly, as the name already indicates, is nearly completely white. This includes the head, thorax, abdomen and the wings. In addition the wings features slightly colored veins. The most common color thereby is brownish, which is also matching really nicely to the species that I found. I was not able to determine the actual size of this little fellow, but during my research I found reported lengths of 4.5 cm to 5.5 cm be common. [3] .. If you look at the antenna of the butterfly you can see that they have an black/white alternating color scheme. I found that it looks really beautiful and together with the brownish veins results in a beautiful color contrast to its otherwise pale white appearance.

Size: Wings-length of approximately 5 cm
Head, Thorax & Abdomen: White with a bit grey in in
Wings: White with a brownish/gray scaling along the veins
Antenna: Alternating black(brownish)/white colored

_{The Pieris Virginiensis features a winglegth of 5 cm.}

_{The head, thorax & abdomen are white with a bit of grey in it.}

_{The wings are white with a brownish/gray scaling along the veins.}

_{The antenna are alternating black(brownish)/white colored.}

Unfortunately I do not have to many pictures of this butterfly, but I hope that those I provide are enough to get an overall impression of the Pieris Virginiensis, the West Virginia White Butterfly, that found its way over here to Europe ^^

Date and Location of the Discovery

The West Virginia White Butterfly was found on 1st September 2020 in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Thank You Very Much !

Thank you very much for taking the time to read about my find ^^ I am still quite surprised that this species made it way to Europe .. Either I found a recently migrating species, or I really messed up the identification ^^ (but do not believe so) .. I also wish the Insects Of The World Community a great start into the Hiveasphere, want to welcome them to DNA project, and want to thank all the willing Moderators that have been found to make it a great community for Insect-Lovers out there ;)

_{All pictures were taken by myself, ©Hive account@adalger, with a Huawei P30 Mobile Phone. For information gathering I mainly used the articles about the Pieris Virginiensis [3] on Wikipedia, as well as the articles about Lepioptera [1] and Pieridae [2].}