This week's butterfly is another one that's been given different names by different scientists.
It's a Swallowtail, so at first scientists put it in the genus Papilio.
It's one of the dark-winged, red-bodied group of Swallowtails, so it was transferred to the genus Atrophaneura.
It's one of the windmill-shaped Atrophaneura, so it's now usually placed in the genus Byasa.
The species name is hedistus, but some scientists aren't sure that it's a distinct species. Some consider it a sub-species of Atrophaneura dasarada.
As the confusion about its name may suggest, not much is really known about hedistus. It's another big, showy butterfly found in China and Vietnam. The one description I found consists of comparisons with dasarada:
"
[male and female]. Like P. dasarada ; the tail in length and colour as in P. d. melanurus, i.e. longer than in Indian specimens of P. dasarada and without a trace of a red spot ; the wing slightly less wide between the lobe in front of the tail and the second lobe behind the tail ; in front of the large white patch a large rounded spot, the last three submarginal spots red, the one in front of the tail paler red than the posterior two ; on underside these three spots and the anal one bright red, and below apex of costal vein a small white spot. Head and body deeper red than in P. dasarada. Scent-organ as in P. dasarada. The main difference is in the harpe, of which the anterior process is short and the apex much pro- longed obliquely downward (PI. VI. fig. 12). As in P. d. melanurus from Hainan the harpe is decidedly of the dasarada-type, it would be very singular if in Yunnan dasarada it deviated very considerably. For that reason I regard the single specimen here figured as representing a species distinct from P. dasarada.
"
[That's from https://archive.org/details/novitateszoologi34lond/page/165/mode/1up?view=theater .It was "Jordan, 1928," and almost every other online source of information about this species refers back to this description.]
Pictures given for this species resemble, if they're not the same as, this one. The photographer credited is Ta Tsien Lou--I think. Search engine hits for Atrophaneura hedistus tend to be checklists, several posted in languages I don't read. No one seems to have been able to photograph this butterfly alive.
[From http://yutaka.it-n.jp/papi.html ]
A more detailed description is available, for a price, at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00305316.2001.10417288?journalCode=toin20 , This specialized study explains the microscopic differences specialists look for, including the shaping of the tail ends that prevents crossbreeding for some insect species. The appearance of hedistus on the list of species suggests that its tail end has a different shape from dasarada. I'm not paying to look at photographic documentation of that. Some things entomologists do are things normal humans do, and some are things for which the entomologists are being well paid.
Many international organizations agree that, because this butterfly is somewhat rare, it needs protection, but not enough is known about it to say whether it's endangered or not. Vu Van Lien argues that, because its habitat in Vietnam is known to be in forests that are being destroyed, this species or sub-species can be considered endangered in Vietnam.
Vu Van Lien's paper is available to the public at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/235210924.pdf. Is that a real scientific study? Yes. English is clearly not Vu Van Lien's first language. Simple counts of species of butterflies caught, identified, and released in many places would be middle school projects, which would need to be reviewed and verified by grown-up scientists only if the students found a large unexplained variation from counts done before. In the area VVL was studying, this seems to have been the first count done by professional scientists, to which subsequent counts will be compared.)
This Chinese study lists the rare species Byasa hedistus as a potentially valuable pollinator in Yunnan. Exactly how many species it pollinates, or what else may pollinate those species, remains to be learned; but the Atrophaneura swallowtails are generally pollinators.
The life cycle of this species (if it is a true species) has yet to be studied, It probably starts out as a little round bead textured with droplets of aristolochic acid, from which emerges a humpbacked caterpillar that eats some sort of vine other animals can't eat and metabolizes the phytochemicals in this vine into some sort of fruity-smelling, bird-repelling odor, but this is not positively known. Its whole life span from egg to adult may be two months or ten weeks, but again, this is not positively known. It would not be the first animal species to go extinct before its habits and life cycle had been scientifically studied.
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