"The Leader." Google does not like this butterfly's species name (or, apparently, the species; see below). It wants to redirect to "agates," to Aeetes (another character in ancient Greek literature), and, when I at first misread the name and typed in "Graphium ageles," to "ageless" or "Angeles" instead of Ageles, who was yet another character in ancient Greek literature. Agetes is not listed as a character's name. It was a title, or part of a title. Homer, for example, was the Mus-agetes, "leader of the Muses," because all of his poems were said to be inspired.
Photo By Uajith - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52201164
Another name for this butterfly is "Four-Barred Swordtail." It has white wings with four narrow black bars depending from the top edge. It's one of the species in the Swallowtail family that are called Swordtails, with long thin pointed "tails" on the outside corners of its hind wings. A fifth black stripe runs along the side of the body.
It is considered common and not endangered in much of its range, but shrinking habitat have caused it to be seen as endangered in Cambodia and Laos. Even where it''s common, it's not seen every day. In some places it has only one generation each year, so it can only be seen during its short flight season. Although the butterflies are abundant in the right times and places, in other times and places their dead bodies are still being sold to ignorant tourists as "a rare butterfly."
Photo by Krushnamegh Kunte.
Males and females look alike. They are pollinators, though males also spend a lot of time hanging out at puddles. When the wings are spread out wide, as on museum specimens, the curved edges give this butterfly the shape of two half-circles, with tails and a body.
This photo by Sl_Liew shows how semicircular the wings can look in flight, too.
In California, Lennette Newell made a symmetrical digital design from museum specimens of this butterfly. Before playing with the digital art possibilities her picture suggests, everyone should at least visit her page and read her explanation of how it came to be...
Agetes fly strong, fast, and high, often above the treetops. However, the leaves on which females lay eggs are typically only about 2m (6 to 7 feet) above the ground, and, of course, puddles...Most photographs of this species are of males sipping water at puddles. Often they join mixed flocks with other Swallowtails and some smaller butterflies. They fly boldly across water and may literally lead other butterflies to puddles.
Photo by Gonaturelam, confirming that this is one of the male Swallowtails who are attracted to the mineral salts in substances like brackish water--or sweat. When Swallowtails really relish what they're drinking, they stop fluttering their wings and can be photographed clearly. At the original size you can see that this butterfly is revelling in the flavor of a sweaty sock, possibly enhanced by residues of laundry detergent. Nature's composters like breaking down chemicals that would be toxic to most other living things. Even female Swallowtails usually prefer to get their minerals from contact with males.
Photo by Geechartier, who doesn't tell us whether this researcher enhanced her shirt with a splash of lemonade or Sprite in the cause of science.
Males have scent folds on the inner edge of each hind wing, and release an odor that is not conspicuous but was described by researchers who sniffed as "bad." Like sweaty socks? The researchers didn't say.
Their food plant, Fissistigma oldhamii, is classified as a medicinal herb. The mother butterfly tries to place each egg in the middle of a new, still growing, leaf. The new leaves are folded. The butterfly uses her body to pry open a leaf that will fold itself together around her egg. The leaf has to be at just the right stage of its development for this trick to work, and the butterfly may spend an hour or more testing leaves in between eggs.
Some sources identify up to five subspecies: Graphium agetes agetes, G.a. chinensis, G.a. insularis, G.a. iponus, and G.a. kinabalensis.
Photo by Lcgoh, documenting that the subspecies iponus has a darker body and (click to enlarge the photo) some reddish hairs on the upper surface of the head and thorax. However, the ThaiButterflies site documents that, n Thailand, G.a. agetes can have some red on the upper body surface too. Most photos of agetes agetes show its pale color to be creamy if not greenish white.
Other subspecies differences are defined by the transparency of the wing tips, the proportions of the black stripes, and so on, but definitions have not been spelled out in digital documents. For this species the Internet has remarkably little in the way of scientific documents and an unpleasantly high proportion of sites offering to sell dead bodies. While harvesting dead bodies does no harm to the species population, why people would want to bring into their homes the dead bodies of animals that were said to smell "bad" while living is hard to understand.
Only one online source offered information about the butterflies' egg-laying behavior, and no online source documented the early stages of these butterflies' lives. More information has probably been published, but been suppressed by Google in order to "force traffic" to the commercial sites that sell dead bodies. We need a reliable search engine that displays all results for the search term provided. Yahoo is not much better than Google, and Google is hardly better than Bing. Still, this species offers opportunities for today's students to make their mark on history.
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