Graphium evombar, found on Madagascar and the Comoros islands, is yet another tropical Swordtail that reminds North Americans of our Zebra Swallowtail...only it's as pale as our small springtime Zebras and as big as our dark late-summer ones. It is sometimes called the Madagascar Swallowtail or Madagascar Swordtail.
Photo by Randrudland, taken in November. There's a tradition that living butterflies are photographed with their heads toward the top of the page. Some butterflies just haven't heard of the tradition.
Photo by Sabrewing, taken in Madagascar in December.
By US standards this is a large butterfly...
Photo from eBay.
,,,But in its tropical habitat, it does not look very big. Photo by Margaretstevens.
Evombar was, according to Boisduval (1836), what local people called this species. He did not know, nor has anyone since reported, why it was called that or whether the word evombar had other meanings. Google does not show a meaning for evombar in the Malagasy language; in the language of Tananarive, properly spelled Antananarivo, it's typical for a word to be properly spelled with a few more syllables than are pronounced when the word is used.
Males and females look very much alike.
Photo of an egg-loaded female, considering where to lay an egg, by Charles J. Sharp. These butterflies are thought to live on plants in the genera Artabotrys and Uvaria but so far no species has been formally documented as a host plant. Nobody seeing a butterfly in egg-laying mode has watched where she placed the eggs and whether the caterpillars survived on the plant. Opportunities for local people to become famous are abundant.
All evombar eclose with long tails but not all individuals keep their tails. This is one species in which the primary function of the tails seems to be to break off when grabbed by predators.
Found all over its native islands, it is classified as a common species in no immediate danger of extinction. Comoros specimens differed from Madagascar specimens enough that the Comoros butterflies are classified as subspecies viossati, but no online source explained what the difference was.
The species generally lives in forests. Individuals, mostly males, come out in the sunshine to sip from puddles. Females spend most of their time looking for suitable leaves to lay eggs on, and mature males spend most of their time following females. Immature males probably do some composting of brackish water in order to get the mineral salts they need to mature sexually. Females probably prefer to get all their mineral salts from contract with males, and may sit at the edges of males' "leks" to wait for a male to leave the group and flit off with them.
The life cycle of this species has, however, yet to be documented. Madagascar fascinates naturalists with the variety of island-specific life forms still found on the island. Apparently larger, stranger, and more endangered species have distracted attention away from Graphium evombar.
Caterpillars apparently have the same shape as other Graphium larvae with bristly spines in the first instar shrinking down to little warts on older caterpillars.
Pupas apparently have a dead leaf shape like other Graphium pupae, perhaps more irregular than some other species.
Adults usually fly in November and December.
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