Many male Swallowtails have hairlike scales in the scent folds along the insides of their hind wings. This week's butterfly, Graphium mendana, may be the hairiest. While some of the Graphiums' white hairs seem to glow in the light, G. mendana looks as if it had cotton stuck to its wings. It is a rare, threatened species, found on the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
Photo from Swallowtails.net.
The cottony hairlike wing scales have been studied in comparison with other Graphium wing scales:
"Graphium mendana malaitae" was proposed as a name for a color pattern slightly different from G.m. aureofasciatum found on Malaita island; more recently this difference has been considered insufficient to classify as a separate subspecies. McGuire et al. were talking about aureofasciatum.
The species name mendana and the subspecies name neyra commemorate the explorer Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra, credited with "discovering" the islands in 1568. The word "discover" did not always mean "be the first human being to find." It originally meant "uncover, remove the covering, unpack, reveal, expose to view." When Mendana, like Columbus, wrote of his "discoveries" for Spanish people they mentioned the language and customs, such as they knew, of the people living in the places they "discovered" to European readers.
The furry-winged butterflies are popular. Paintings of them have been used on the postage stamps of several countries.
This set, which rates Graphium mendana right alongside the gorgeous Birdwings, can be bought at https://www.surinamestamps.com/stamp-issue-programme-2018/ .
This stamp can be bought at https://colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/220-Tuvalu/theme/3028-Animals_Fauna/year/2009/emission/2-Commemorative/min_accuracy/very_low/perforation/62-combi_11%C2%BDi . (Note that, although the drawing's accuracy is rated "very low," some museum specimens of Graphium mendana do show blue-white and black rather than yellow and mahogany-brown colors.)
Since nobody has studied their life cycle nobody really knows what these butterflies require to survive, but interfering with them by disturbing their habitat is classified as an "environmental crime."
However, the island governments encourage students to rear and sell native insects for resale to collectors. This New Guinean manual is worth downloading. Not only does it contain drawings of all New Guinea's special species of butterflies, beetles, moths, and stick insects; it also offers instructions people around the world can use to attract rare, little-known insects for "ranching." Don't clear land, just encourage plants the target insect species are known to like, and have a try at rearing the eggs...Somewhere a high school student is learning what Graphium mendana eats. Note also the explanation for the student's incredulous mother, who may have noticed that many male Swallowtails are composters, can even be nuisances if they like to lick human sweat, and aren't a great deal cleaner than houseflies, that some people actually want to collect deceased insects.
(Notice how small Graphium mendana appears next to the Birdwings. This is accurate--the Birdwings seem to belong in some other world where things are larger, to have been built on the same scale as the whales, condors, and redwoods also found near the Pacific Ocean. But mendana is not one of the smaller Graphium species. Wingspans are often over four inches.)
Page 17 of the Solomon Islands' PDF explains the market value of butterfly carcasses. Of course the Birdwings are the most valuable but the Graphiums and Papilios are valued higher than "common butterflies," a phrase which on these islands includes the local counterparts to our Monarchs...
There are four subspecies: Graphium mendana acous, G.m. aureofasciatum (or aureofasciatus or aureofasciata), G.m. mendana, and G.m. neyra. They are found on Bougainville, Malaita, Guadalcanal, and New Georgia islands respectively. They have slight but consistent differences in color patterns. Local people think they can eat pepper plants, but this has not been formally documented. More details are on page 234 of the printed IUCN Red Data Book, or page 246 of the PDF:
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