Naturalists have had fun with this one. Atrophaneura nox, the Malayan Batwing, has several variant forms that are consistent enough to be counted as subspecies, and the subspecies names on various lists include nix, noctis, noctula, nox, and nyx. All of which words can be translated as having something to do with "night." So it's the Red-Bodied Swallowtail of the Night-Night, or of the Little Night, or...Determining whether butterflies belong to separate species is tedious work, and it seems to go faster when the subspecies names get silly.
Photo by L.C. Goh, who seems to have spent years collecting and arranging butterfly pictures at pbase.com; this one is at https://pbase.com/lcgoh/image/161139269 .
The structure of its wings, and its life cycle, put it in the Swallowtail group, although it does not actually have "swallowtails" on its hind wings. Naturalists have quibbled about this. All of the Swallowtails were originally classified as Papilio, and in the nineteenth century some wanted to give nox the genus name Karanga. In the twentieth century, after all the Red-Bodied Swallowtails had been given the genus name Atrophaneura, some proposed that nox be assigned to the genus Parides. Others argued that Atrophaneura was the best genus name for the Red-Bodied Swallowtails most similar to nox. This argument seems to be currently accepted by most entomologists. Almost everything online about this species calls it Atrophaneura nox.
This male was found iridescing in a park in Thailand by O. Kosterin, who was visiting from Russia.
The butterflies are fairly large, with wingspans of three or four inches, sometimes a little more. Females tend to be larger than males. Forewings have a shape defined by what entomologists call an arched costa, a tough "rib" of tissue along the front edge. Males have a narrow fold along the inside edge of each hindwing from which scent is released as they fly. The basic wing color of all the Atrophaneuras is black, but it can fade to brown, shimmer in iridescent blue, or show highlights of pale grey that can look like white stripes. One English name for this species was "Blue Batwing," but since other Batwings can also look blue the official English name is "Malayan Batwing." Apart from the red patches on the body, nox doesn't have conspicuous red or white spots, as other Atrophaneuras do. Museum specimens fade quickly to a rich deep brown with or without lighter brown stripes on the edges of the forewings. Forewings are about twice the size of hindwings.
This one was tweeted by Dr Amar-Singh HSS. The butterfly's body tends to look black with a reddish halo from above, red from below. The red color may show only on the head, in patches on either side of the thorax, all around the lower thorax, and sometimes at the end of the abdomen.
A forest dweller, the Malayan Batwing occurs in slightly different forms in many different forests. A Singapore subspecies or variety is believed to be extinct. In addition to the nox, noctix, nyx wordplay, other subspecies names include erebus, henricus, banjermasinus, solokanus, niepeltiana, petronius, smedleyi, tungensis, mirifica, hirokane, and miekaae, each found on a different island. When the last two subspecies were added to the list, enough nitpicking studies of dead specimens had been done for
Masashi Hirata and Takashi Myakawa to write a book about them. Teachers can borrow the book from https://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/R000000004-I8030622-00?ar=4e1f .For a simpler illustration of the range of difference between subspecies erebus (typically large) and nyx (typically small), visit https://swallowtails.net/A_nox.htm .
Nix and nyx seem to be spelling variations but some other species and subspecies names have been proposed, and dropped, for these butterflies. Old books may list species strix, neesius, and memercus, which are now regarded as variations of nox, and may list erebus, henricus, and noctis as distinct species. A subspecies hainanensis was found to be more closely related to A. varuna, which looks very similar to nox, and is now usually called A. varuna astorion.
In the shapes of this pair of Batwings you can see the structural resemblance to the much bigger and more colorful Birdwings. Though new, these museum pieces already look drab. Like many living things, all their visual appeal fades in the minute the heart stops. Dead butterflies retain some scientific interest, but they're hardly decorative.
Photo shared on Flickr by Bugsmanyeh, who thought this was a newly hatched male and noted that it would stop and rest, as shown, in between flights up to the flowers on a tall tree nearby.
On a global scale, the many variants of nox are classified together as a "species of least concern," but local subspecies may be of greater concern. This web site officially deplores the multitude of sites offering dead bodies for sale. Dead butterflies are easy enough to find in nature that one should never pay for a body. Butterflies are now collected with cameras, which makes collecting much more hygienic and never fills the house with disagreeable Dermestid beetles who will, if your house is clean, fly out to check you for dead skin. The beetles don't bite living skin, they're only interested in body tissues that are completely dead, but the combination of prickly little beetle feet, that hurry-up-and-die-please vibe, and these beetles' superficial resemblance to the dreaded bedbug, should be enough to motivate any butterfly fancier to invest in a camera and burn any dead bodies that may be moldering away in a drawer.
Showy though the black-and-red color scheme can look, in its deep-woods habitat Atrophaneura nox is actually well camouflaged. It's worth clicking on https://www.naturalista.mx/taxa/469824-Atrophaneura-nox/browse_photos to see a whole series of motion shots showing how well this butterfly fades into the shadows, resting or flying.
Some living individuals' black wing veins are outlined with crisp white stripes. Fluttering in a shadow, they look like...shadows. Well, like shadows moving faster than usual. This picture was posted on Pinterest. I saw no author name, but a commenter addressed the poster as "Jimmy."
Not much is officially known about the life cycle or cycles of these butterflies. Liew Nyok Lin's Blogspot contains a beautiful photo essay of a nox Liew described as a "rather tiny male," which Liew found as a caterpillar and watched mature in Malaysia.
I wanted to gank one of the caterpillar photos--it looks like other Atrophaneura caterpillars only different; they're all designed to look as inedible as possible, like a large unhealthy bird dropping with bristles--and I have that right under "fair use," but I just couldn't. You have to see the whole photo sequence. This is the blog of a serious scientist. He didn't rear the little fellow in a cage; he went back and looked for the pupa, then watched Tiny Male eclose (in February; this is a tropical species for which "February" means warm, slightly less rainy, weather). You have to see it for yourself.
What he documented is that Atrophaneura nox is different from A. luchti, A. varuna, etc., at all stages of life. It's not radically different--nox and luchti have reportedly been forced to crossbreed and produced offspring that lived to fly--but it seems to be a species difference rather than a look produced by environmental conditions. Also, while the French Wikipedia page could only say that the caterpillars probably have osmeteria as most swallowtail larvae do, Liew photographed his little friend poking out a bright orange osmeterium.
Science is still being made, Gentle Readers.
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