Abstract
Genetic correlation structure among several morphological characters, which might have ecological significance (pupal weight, body weight, forewing length, median cell length, hindwing length), of cabbage white butterflies Pieris rapae crucivora have been surveyed by means of statistical genetic analysis. Slightly to highly positive genetic correlations (min=0.04, max=0.87) were estimated among those characters. Principal component analysis, which was undertaken for the phenotypic, the genetic and the environmental correlation matrices each, has extracted first two significant components that may be interpreted as "general size factor (PCI)" and "shape factor (PC2)", which would determine the proportion between body size and wing size, both from the phenotypic and the genetic correlation matrices. There was observed a tendency that the phenotypic and the genetic correlations should resemble each other (the vector correlation of factor loadings in principal component scores is 0.85), the genetic correlations might be availably inferred from the phenotypic correlations at least for signs and relative magnitudes of the coefficients.
