I'm still playing catch-up, because a funny thing happens when I look up all the fun facts on the Internet about an animal species. It's similar to what happens when I write e-books. I do one at a time, and then my brain says "Enough. Let's do something else," and it does. At least it won't snap directly to another butterfly, or another book...
Anyway, today's featured butterfly is Eurytides serville, the Serville Kite or Serville Swordtail. "Swordtail" is usually reserved for the Graphium species, which occupy a comparable ecological niche in India, but serville does have very long tails. Because both the antennae and the swallowtails end in pale tips that can sometimes iridesce bright yellow or orange, it's sometimes called the Orange-Clubbed Kite. Because of the uneven edges of the lower wings, which flutter in the air as the butterflies fly, it's been called the Frilled Kite. The scientific name commemorates a place in France; it can be translated as "village of serfs" but may originally have had a meaning more appealing to the medieval French mind. The first specimen described belonged to a Monsieur de Serville (and the first descriptions were in French and Latin).
(Serfs were different from slaves in one important way: a slave could be sold whenever and wherever his owner found a buyer, while a serf could only be sold along with the land on which he lived. He had no control over the use of the land and could be ordered to participate in land use of which he might not approve, but he had a right to stay in his ancestral home.)
Why was it named so late? It's common, widespread, and not noticeably threatened. It's found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. It looks similar to some variants of E. columbus, and some writers still don't sound positive that it's a distinct species. Some list it as a subspecies of columbus.Rothschild noted that the species look most similar in the parts of their range that overlap, and speculated that they might hybridize.
Photo by Rogerritt, taken in Peru in November. This photo and many others at nature sites document that serville can be positively gregarious. Males hang out together at puddles, sipping mineral-rich water and waiting to become ready to mate. They seem to make no effort to be the only one of their sex and species in the neighborhood. The puddles attract large mixed flocks of butterflies of different species.
This slow-motion video of serville and other butterflies' puddling behavior, in Peru, doesn't tell us anything we didn't know by now, but it's a great way to relax.
Here a male serville seems to challenge a smaller member of the Swallowtail family, Mimoides xeniades, presumably for status in the group. Butterflies are not physically capable of doing each other much harm but males of gragarious species sometimes play "chicken."It's all wholesome sport for them; they're so light they wouldn't hurt each other if they did collide. (For some butterflies, colliding and falling together is a courtship game.)
Pretty to watch in slow motion, serville move fast in real life. A "butterfly tourist" in Ecuador described what sound like a newly eclosed generation "zooming up and down the road" in March:
Most photos show this butterfly as white or yellowish with a few black stripes.
Photo by Pavlik, taken in October in Ecuador. Slowing that almost perpetual motion that makes Swallowtails a challenge to photograph, in interest in a scarred leaf, probably one that has recovered from damage by infant caterpillars...this one might be female.
In some lights, some individuals can look green.
Slight but consistent differences have been observed between two subspecies, Eurytides serville acritus and E.s. serville:
One mght expect that such a gregarious Kite would have lots of food plants. One might be right. Their natural or primary food plants may be Nectandra or Guatteria, which are favored by other Kites, but serville caterpillars reportedly can eat many kinds of leaves from the Rutaceae family, including rue itself, and also lime and orange and apparently some other citrus trees. There is a marked lack of scientific authority among the reports of exactly what, when, and how the caterpillars eat.
Adult butterflies feed on nectar from various plants including lantanas, thistles, and eupatoriums. They are said to have an odor humans notice and usually don't like, possibly in the burnt-sugar to dirty-sock range like the lantana flowers whose odor obviously doesn't put them off.
No clear description of the early stages is available. One source says the caterpillars have colorful bands, but does not say which colors.
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