This week's butterfly is known mostly by names that make sense: Graphium androcles, the Giant Swordtail.
Photo from Fachrynurmallojr.
Graphium ia the genus of African and Asian butterflies that have long tails on their hind wings, or else have little or no tails but have the same wing shape as the ones with the long tails. Graphium androcles is said to have the longest tails of all Swallowtail species; the tails project from the wings at an unusual angle, making them even more conspicuous. The upper side looks black, or faded black, and white; the underside shows a small yellow-orange spot, a patch of yellow-green, and sometimes, depending on the light, a smaller patch of blue-green or sky blue.
Androcles was a hero from ancient literature. Most people who read English know his story, but, for those who don't: Supposedly Androcles removed a thorn from the paw of a lion he met in the North African desert. Later he was sentenced to fight a lion in the Roman arena, where a crowd of people who had lost human feeling from living in crowded conditions gathered to watch the lions tear convicts to pieces. Androcles was shoved out in front of the lion he had helped before, and the lion recognized him and did not try to hurt him.
Swordtails are butterflies with long tails on their hind wings, and Graphium androcles is bigger than some of the other species in this group. Wingspans range from 3 to 4.7 inches, females being larger than males. Because of its greater size and calmer manner it's been called the King of Swordtails. Here is a video of how one individual seemed to earn this name:
Photo by Zicky, making a similar point.
Like other Graphiums, Graphium androcles was at first placed in the genus Papilio with all the Swallowtails. In the nneteenth century scientists started breaking up the overcrowded list of Papilio species with new genus names like Graphium. Some people now think Graphium is overcrowded and includes too many disparate species, too, and want to classify androcles in the proposed genus Pathysa.
Considered an endangered species, Giant Swordtails are most often found in Indonesia, sometimes in southern India and on other islands. They are protected as an attraction in the Bantimurung-Bulusaraung national park. They have always been especially associated with Sulawesi island.
Both sexes pollinate. Male Swallowtails tend to do more compositing than females; in any case, researchers bait this butterfly with soapy water, urine, and carrion including dead butterflies. Such liquids contain mineral salts. Both sexes need their minerals but females usually prefer to absorb theirs from the spermatophore, after mating, rather than drink their own mineral-rich liquids. Composter species may be especially at risk when their sources of mineral salts include new mixes of chemicals, but a research paper attempting to identify causes of population decline in this species did not consider this possibility.
Indonesians have complained that this butterfly is becoming difficult to find. One reason is the antiquated and rather ghoulish custom of "collecting" butterfly carcasses, which still goes on today, when almost anyone can afford a more modern and enjoyable collection of digital photos. Half the links for this species name on Google go to pages that claim to traffic in carcasses. It's possible to collect butterfly bodies after the butterflies are dead, or even rear butterflies for the purpose of killing a few "perfect" specimens, without affecting the species population, but when a species is threatned to an unknown extent by human activity, habitat disturbance, local warming, "pesticide" spraying, etc., and people who may feel a great need for money are able to sell butterfly carcasses, the idea of collecting carcasses ought to disgust everyone. We should never pay for dead butterflies.
It would be better to pay for photos and videos of butterflies in their natural habitat, along with other beautiful living things, like this short video posted free of charge to advertise the park:
Monophagous butterflies are unlikely to form great flocks in any case. Since their existence is tied to the population of their hot plant, they often avoid places where their fantastic sense of smell tells them that another butterfly of their species and gender has recently been. Photos of Graphium androcles often show this "king" species, like our Monarchs, alone at a puddle, surrounded by flocks of smaller butterfly species. Some photos show pairs, often in different shades of color, suggesting that this may be one of the species where higher-contrast colors identify males.
Photo by Jesl. So, are these two a courting couple?
Photo by Nisa13. Is this museum piece an example of gender confusion? For almost every butterfly species in which male and female look different, somebody has found an individual with the male pattern on one side and the female pattern on the other. Larger animals, including humans like the Twit known as Yizz the Unifier, can have this pattern too. Their gender may be determinable because the male side develops more completely than the female side or vice versa; in any case they're likely to be sterile. Knowing that this can happen to insects should help people understand that it is happening to an increasing number of humans, these days, aggravated by a crowded and polluted environment. There is no reason to blame these people or treat them like freaks. They didn't choose gener confusion, any more than the butterflies did, and their acceptance of it is a sign of good mental health.But we should recognize this natural phenomenon as part of nature's tendency to correct overpopulation. In animal populations, when an increasing number of "alternative sexualities" fails to correct overpopulation fast enough, it is followed by violent antisocial behavior and by plagues.
It should also be noted that at least one image of a Graphium androcles whose wings don't match has, admittedly, been skilfully digitized to show the upper wing pattern on one side and the under wing pattern on the other side. For this species that means more faded black and brighter yellow on the underside of the fore wing, and more spots on the underside of the hnd wing.
This photo By Accassidy - Kalugaringon nga buhat, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45626040 is Art not Nature.
Males of this species are said to have well developed scent folds on the hind wings. This feature is hard to illustrate in photographs, especially when the butterfly rarely spreads its wings out flat.
Subspecies cleomenes, latilinea, and pelengensis have been documented, but if that documentation has been digitized Google is suppressing most of it. An old book that's been digitally photographed says that latilinea was "Distinguished by the narrower white bands and the heavier submarginal line on the fore wing." Newer descriptions have dropped the name latilinea and most don't mention the other subspecies either. Funet lists cleomenes and pelengensis but gives no information about them.
Only in 2016-2017 did Harlina et al. publish a formal study of this species' life cycle, which they observed in caged individuals in the park.
They found that the butterflies matured in seven to ten weeks. In order to keep track of the young butterflies, the scientists confined all caterpillars to a wooden cage, about 1 x 2 meters, covered in thin fabric. "Ant chalk" was placed on the ground around the cage.
Eggs hatched in five to nine days. About 40% of the eggs in the scientists' care hatched. into caterpillars. The threats to egg survival the scientist found were parasites and fungi.
Caterpillars ate their way through five skins in 23 to 30 days, and nine out of ten of the caterpillars the scientists reared lived long enough to pupate. The ones who were lost were parasitized during the fourth instar. Drab at all stages, the caterpillars grew from imitation bird droppings with dark skins splotched with white, into slim, only slightly hunchbacked, medium-gray caterpillars with a distinct narrow "waist" and wasp-shaped "tail" section on the abdominal section. They ate the leaves of Uvaria rufa exclusively.
Pupation lasted for 20 to 25 days. Seven out of ten pupae completed eclosion and lived to fly.Pupae were dull green and had a withered-leaf shape. A few turned black from fungus infection. The scientists believed that checking the cage daily and reoving any moldy pupae was crucial to their high success rate.
The linked paper contains photos of eggs, caterpillars, and pupae, in a PDF format that does not allow copying. If any other web site has photos of immature Graphium androcles, it's being suppressed.
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