The Ant-heap Small White or Ant-heap White (Dixeia pigea) is a butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 in the Pieridae

Pieridae

The Pieridae are a large family of butterflies with about 76 genera containing approximately 1,100 species, mostly from tropical Africa and Asia. Most pierid butterflies are white, yellow or orange in coloration, often with black spots...

 family and is native to Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

Description

The wingspan is 40–48 mm for males and 40–52 mm for females. The upperside of the wings of males is pure white with a narrow black forewing tip and small black dots on the hindwing margin. The underside is whitish with two rows of black spots on the hindwings, with the inner row sometimes absent or incomplete. The female has several colour forms, but is usually pale yellowish-white on the uppersurface with heavier black markings than the male, and has a dark spot on each forewing. There is a rare female form (luteola) where the upperside is orange-yellow or deep apricot. The underside of females is similar to the male but the rows of black dots are more pronounced and the base colour is pale to bright yellow. Another rare form (rubrobasalis) has orange suffusion at the base of the underside of the forwing and a creamy-yellow upperside. The dry season form (alba) has reduced black markings. A distinguishing feature of D. pigea is that the hindwing costal has a yellow streak, unlike other Dixeia species.

Distribution

This species is found from the Eastern Cape

Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are Port Elizabeth and East London. It was formed in 1994 out of the "independent" Xhosa homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province...

 Province of South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 through KwaZulu-Natal

KwaZulu-Natal

KwaZulu-Natal is a province of South Africa. Prior to 1994, the territory now known as KwaZulu-Natal was made up of the province of Natal and the homeland of KwaZulu....

, Swaziland

Swaziland

Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...

, Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga , is a province of South Africa. The name means east or literally "the place where the sun rises" in Swazi, Xhosa, Ndebele and Zulu. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, north of KwaZulu-Natal and bordering Swaziland and Mozambique. It constitutes 6.5% of South Africa's land area...

 and Limpopo Province, to Mozambique

Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

, Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

, Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, DRC

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

, Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

, and Cameroon

Cameroon

Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...

.

Eggs

Groups of tiny, elongated eggs are laid on the undersurface of the leaves of the foodplants.

Larvae

The larvae are green in colour; pale green on the back and darker green on the sides when young, and develop two rows of pale green blotches down the length of the body as they grow older. The foodplants are Capparis sepiaria and Capparis tomentosa

Capparis tomentosa

The Woolly Caper Bush is a plant in the Capparaceae family and is native to Africa.-Distribution:Found in bushveld and forest from the Eastern Cape of South Africa, through KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo Province, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and into Tropical Africa...

.

Pupae

The pupae have an unusual shape, with a pointed 'nose' and a notable spike on each side of the body protruding from a broad, flattened area mid way down the body. There is a smaller spike both to the fore and rear of each of these larger spikes, and a small spike on each side of the body just to the rear of the head. The larger spikes resemble to some extent the double, hooked thorns on the stems of the foodplant, Capparis tomentosa (see image). The pupae may be pale green, dark green or brown in colour. The wing areas show whitish or yellowish with dark spots near to hatching and the body becomes greyish.

Adults

The flight period is all year. They have been described as having a medium-fast, random flight pattern or as a rather weak, slow flying butterfly. They keep to open areas in riverine forest and thick bush or the edges of bush areas. Both sexes feed from flowers and are greatly attracted to flowering bushes exposed to the sun.