Appias albina

MORPHOLOGY

External characteristics

Male 
Forewing length (mm): 25 - 30 (Otsuka, Kazuhisa, 2001). Wingspan (mm): 51 (Braby, 2004).
Forewings: The forewing is is acute and the termen are straight. The forewing lacks the black dot (Yata and Morishita, 1979). The forewing is pointed at the apex and is spotless white coloured (Otsuka, Kazuhisa, 2001). 

Female  Wingspan (mm):48 (Braby, 2004).
Female appearances strongly variate both seasonally and polychromatically; the wet season form is heavily black-margined on the underside surface of the wing, this colouring can be seen on the upper side surface as well (D'Abrera, 1982). The forewing lacks the white dot, but does have a black coloured submarginal dot. The underside wing surface is sometimes glossed with purple. A white and yellow female form occurs (Yata and Morishita, 1979).  

Subspecies and variation

 
Four subspecies are described (D'Abrera, 1982; Yata and Morishita, 1979), of which two are found in Philippines. Ssp. venusta and ssp. albina are barely distinguishable from each other. For the wet season form of A. albina the termen are straight; for the dry season form, the termen slightly crenulate near the apex (D'Abrera, 1982).

Similar species

This species is often confused with Appias paulina (D'Abrera, 1982; Yata and Morishita, 1979), but Appias albina is seldom encountered below 2000 ft. The males of Appias albina are best distinguished from Appias paulina by the greater extent of black apical markings on the forewing underside, and Appias paulina have tornal markings on the hindwing underside; The termen of a male Appias paulina is always concave (D'Abrera, 1982).