6 
Psyche 
[Vol. 91 
eggs can present an optical illusion, however, an edge view of a 
partly eaten egg shell shows clearly that the hexagons are indeed 
pits. 
Comstock and Vazquez (1960) also describe and figure a 
differently sculptured egg, which they call A. iphicla with the 
reservation that it might actually be an egg of 3 Doxocopa. Because 
their larvae died soon after hatching, the authors never knew that 
they had indeed been fooled by the ovipositing Doxocopa female, a 
mimic of Adelpha. My own rearing of Doxocopa laure (LOT 83-6) 
was from two eggs with pattern (figure 1) identical to that in figure 
33 of their paper. My reared Adelpha iphicla were from eggs 
patterned as those of all the other Adelpha species examined so far. 
Possibly this egg sculpture pattern will be found throughout the 
Limenitini and may prove useful in defining tribal limits. 
Development Time 
Oviposition was observed only for Adelpha iphicla, and each of 
the three fresh eggs collected required 5 days development before 
the first instars emerged. Of five other species collected as eggs, of 
unknown age, three had longer minimum egg-development times 
than did A. iphicla: A. basiloides (LOT 82-65), one egg hatched 
after 6 days; A. cytherea (LOT 83-3), one egg hatched after 7 days; 
and A. salmoneus (LOT 83-14), two eggs hatched after 6 days. 
Because individuals were collected at various stages of devel- 
opment, total time from hatching to eclosion could be determined 
for only a few individuals of ten species. In spite of the fact that the 
resulting data (Table 2) is not uniform, it is clear that development 
time is variable, and often more so within a species than between 
species. The extreme example of wide variation is in A. basiloides 
which has a longer development time than other species, and which 
sometimes passes through six instars instead of the usual five. Five 
6-instar individuals of A. basiloides were encountered, and these 
were from four separate rearing lots, each of which included 5-instar 
individuals as well. Each of these lots was collected on Amaioua 
corymbosa; larvae collected on Alibertia edulis and Bertiera 
guianensis did not produce extra instars. In spite of the additional 
instar, 6-instar individuals did not require longer development times 
3 As Chlorripe. 
