This week's butterfly is another rare and endangered species, Graphium megaera, found in the Philippine Islands, most associated with the island called Palawan.
Megaera was a character in Greek mythology, but not one that would normally be called a hero. She was one of the three Furies, portrayed as terrible old women who enforced Greek Pagans' stern moral code by hounding evildoers to death. The Furies were not usually characterized--the emphasis was on avoiding their attention, and it was thought best to refer to them indirectly and ironically as "the Kindly Ones"--but Megaera's name meant "jealousy," so she is sometimes called the goddess of jealousy or envy.
Some artists portrayed the Furies as ordinary-looking women; some gave them other metaphoric attributes such as dogs' heads or bats' wings. Some saw them as personifications of guilt. The Furies are sometimes described as robed in rusty or faded black. If an individual Graphium megaera were fluttering around a naturalist, trying to lick his sweaty skin, that might have suggested this name.
Some Graphium megaera might be said to resemble some Graphium meeki. The proportions of dark to light on individuals' wings vary.
Dark museum specimen from WorthPoint.
Light museum specimen from Insecta.pro.
They are small as Graphiums go, with wingspans about three inches. Most individuals seem to be well camouflaged. Google does not show a photo of a living Graphium megaera at any stage of its life. One photo, showing the living butterfly's wings iridescing coal black and milky white, can be found at the bottom of page 276 in
All this book says about G. megaera is that it's local and uncommon.
This species lives in forests. Most of what's been published online about it has been a debate about whether to preserve natural forests on Palawan or plant oil palms there. Conservation reportedly won at least the official debate.
According to the IUCN Red Book, the species is most often seen in March and April, sometimes seen in May through August, usually near wet spots on the ground. It is not positively known whether anyone has seen the female of the species. Some think they have, and think the sexes look alike.
Needless to say, just how endangered the species really is is also unknown. As with so many Graphiums, there never have been very many of them and they've always done a very good job of lurking in forests and looking like little dots of sunshine on dead leaves. This makes their risk of extinction hard to assess. Being so seldom noticed, they might not even be missed--at first--if they went extinct. They are, however, part of an ecosystem that includes Atrophaneura atropos and several larger animals; the whole ecosystem needs preservation.
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