Although blue is often seen in the spots on Buckeye butterfly wings, a Buckeye with blue background on its wings is quite unusual.

As we noticed a bit of blue in the background of wild Buckeye wings, our curiosity won. Each time we emerged a Buckeye butterfly with blue in the background of its wings, we would isolate it and collect its eggs. As time passed, each generation would bring more Buckeyes with this iridescent blue in the background on the wings.

After several generations, the hindwings began to show a good bit more blue. By continually isolating any butterflies with blue in the background, we began to emerge Buckeye butterflies with the entire background of their wings a remarkable metallic blue.

After a couple of years, we noticed that some had metallic green backgrounds, some purple, and a few a smoky black background.

We ended up with a rough ratio of 85% blue, 8% green, 3% with purple, and the rest a smoky metallic black color.

The only manipulation used to create these beauties was simply choosing which mated females we would use to lay eggs. All the colors brought in in this experiment were from recessive genes. To find other Junonia species, which all would come from a common ancestor, we did a bit of internet searching.

Look for the blue, green, and purple in these beauties. They are all butterflies in the Junonia genus. All have a common ancestor.