Graphium levassori could reasonably be called Levassor's Graphium, but since the tailless, pale-colored African Graphiums had been nicknamed the Ladies and this one is more likely to look yellowish than others are, its English name is Yellow Lady. Its French name is Flambee de Levasseur. (It was named after a Monsieur Legros-Levassor. Why the spelling was changed I don't know.) Some people, looking at the specimens they have seen, prefer Ivory Lady, which is possible, or White Lady, which is taken.
Photo from Insect Net Archive Forum.
In many ways it resembles Graphium leonidas.
Its life history is unknown. It may fly all year. It has been seen most often in April, the beginning of the rainy season.
It is found only on the Comoros islands. It's not exactly common even there. So any ventures in the direction of "modernizing" the islands, clearing away native plants, building, paving, spraying, etc., are a threat to the species' survival. It is listed as an endangered species.
Worse than that, it looks as if it could become a pest on custard-apples. Seventy or eighty thousand people are trying to live on the island called Grande Comor. Most of them are poor farmers. Custard-apples, which are "related to" pawpaws in the sense that apples are "related to" pears, will grow on the island; the fruit don't travel well but humans who live where they grow like to eat them. And this butterfly species increased dramatically in numbers after custard-apples were planted on the island.
Though some Swallowtail caterpillars can get very large and hungry (Graphium levassori is not a very large member of this butterfly family), no Swallowtail is a serious pest. The caterpillars eat leaves, and some are definitely attracted to leaves that have been damaged by something else. Finding an ugly caterpillar crawling on a branch with all its leaves damaged or gone tends to trigger an ugly defensive reaction in farmers. The caterpillar is not to blame but all the circumstantial evidence is pointing to it. The farmer wants to kill the caterpillar before it grows up and multiplies.
In fact, although Graphium levassori is not one of the known symbiotic species, many Swallowtail butterflies live in complete symbiosis with their host plants; they may be the host plant's only pollinator and its only predator. Nature keeps populations balanced in such a way that, although Swallowtail caterpillars that eat low-growing plants may seem to gnaw their host plants down to the ground, the plants grow fast enough to survive the caterpillars' predation. In several species, the plants depend on the butterflies for pollination, and thus for survival. There can't be pawpaws without Zebra Swallowtails. On the mainland of Africa other Swallowtails pollinate custard-apple trees, but on the Comoros islands Graphium levassori may do the trees more good than harm. Nobody claims to know this for certain...but the growth in levassori population was not followed by any loss of custard-apples.
As Swallowtails go, the Yellow Lady is not especially pretty, but it is rare. Scientists have seriously proposed encouraging Comorian farmers to try rearing this butterfly on custard-apple trees. This web site considers, e.g., the lovely Luna moth or the not rare but interesting Manduca genus, and imagines the reactions of Virginia hill farmers if County Extension agents advised them to try rearing those. ("He said I ought to try REARING TOMATO WORMS!") More likely to encourage poor farmers, this web site imagines, would be offering scholarships to Comorian students who were willing to learn how to study what these butterflies naturally eat and how they can coexist with humans. All Graphium caterpillars are creatively ugly. Overcoming the prejudice humans naturally tend to have against them is likely to take serious money.
General eco-tourism might be cheaper at the start. The Comoros islands claim at least a dozen more unique species of butterflies and moths, each island claims its own peculiar species of owl, and the islands are also the homes of birds and other small animals not known to exist anywhere else in the world. If it were made profitable for Comorian people to preserve the natural habitats of species that became tourist attractions, they'd probably do it. Their species list is impressive, suggesting a potential for eco-tourism comparable with Madagascar or the Galapagos.
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