Butterfly of the Week: Lesser Batwing

Proceeding alphabetically, we come to the genus Atrophaneura, the Batwing butterflies. Batwings are large, mostly dark-colored butterflies whose wing structures are like swallowtails' except  for not having "tails." Apparently they looked startling to European naturalists because they have Halloween-type names. The Lesser Batwing, Atrophaneura aidoneus, was named after a Greek god usually identified with Hades or Pluto, the King of the Underworld. 

While some of the Atrophaneura species are gaudy, A. aidoneus can look as sober as one of those religious people who used to give up wearing bright colors to show their commitment. (It was not an unreasonable commitment in the days when colorful dyes made fabric more expensive.) Then again, if the light hits the male's wings just right...

The iridescent wings usually photograph as dark grey with black stripes along and between the veins. The female is not so iridescent, but on careful observation appears to be more of a dark gray with darker gray stripes along and between the veins. 

The body doesn't look hairy, but gets its color from fine glossy hairs. The hairs can be iridescent blue-black, as shown, or they can be shocking pink.

Often the body just looks black.

This specimen from India, with the pink head and black body, does remind me of a vulture--which seems unfair, considering that this is one Swallowtail species in which even the males are not primarily composters, and behave less like vultures than some of the brighter-colored Swallowtails do. All of the Atrophaneuras can have pink or red on part or all of the body. 

Huu Lien has a photo essay about the three species found in Vietnam at http://butterfliesvietnam.blogspot.com/2017/03/259-atrophaneura-aidoneus-aidoneus.html.

These large butterflies flit through southern Asia: India, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, parts of China. Their wingspans can be six inches or a little more, usually a little less. Females tend to be slightly bigger than males. Variations among individuals are not usually considered to form clear sub-species distinctions, though some Indian researchers use sub-species names.

While butterflies depend on the sun for warmth, this species' warm environment supplies all the warmth it needs, and it looks for shade. Both males and females pollinate flowers, especially in the genus Lantana. Males slurp up mineral salts at puddles but don't seem to congregate at puddles as some male Swallowtails do. Like most of the very large butterflies and moths, they have never been really common. They are not, however, generally considered to be at great risk of extinction. 

In Bangladesh and Nepal, local populations are endangered by human activity. Since their habitat includes public park land, government efforts have focussed on protecting butterfly habitat inside these parks.

Relatively little has been written about this species. While Google shows that lots of people recognize and photograph the adults, whose range in space and time is extensive (they fly between April and November), they're not economically important to humans. By Indian standards, they're not even very showy. (If you think six inches of bright iridescent blue is showy, wait'll you see the butterflies people in India do notice.) Google shows no positively identified images of eggs, larvae, or pupae of this species.