This week's butterfly, Heraclides androgeus, flies in South America and some Caribbean islands. It is considered a close "relative" of H. andraemon. In English it is usually called the Androgeus Swallowtail, sometimes called the Queen Swallowtail. (People who call H. androgeus the Queen call H. thoas the King Swallowtail.) In Mexico it is sometimes called Cometa Banda Amarilla, the Yellow Band Swallowtail. It has two distinct color patterns, male and female, with much variation among individuals. It is easily photographed; photos are abundant on Google...
Photo from Neotropical Butterflies. Males have yellow spots that form a wide continuous band across all four wings.
Photo from Facebook. The underside of the male is mostly yellow.
Photo from Flickr. The female may have a yellow patch on her fore wings, or, like the one shown above, may not. The size and shape of the iridescent blue patch on her hind wings varies. The fore wings may also iridesce blue or green.
The wingspan can be over five inches and males, as in the couple above, can have wider wingspans than females. The size range overlaps but Lewis's widest-winged specimen was male.
One or two of the points along the scalloped hind wings may be much longer than the others, or all may be short. Some of these butterflies have long "swallow tails," and some have five or six short "tails" on each wing. Swallowtails' "tails" are almost always symmetrical when the wings first unfold, but they are expendable and may be missing from living butterflies.
As in other sexually dimorphic species, "chimeras" with a mix of male and female DNA are occasionally found. In butterflies gender confusion is recognizable when the wings develop in the male pattern on one side and the female pattern on the other.
A population of this species seemed to be colonizing southern Florida in the 1970s; the butterflies became resident nuisances on citrus groves but, depending on how we look at it, the colony failed or was successfully extirpated in the 1980s.
Because of color variations, many subspecies names have been proposed. Delano Lewis recognized three (androgeus, epidaurus, and laodocus); some online sources also accept reyesorum and iuanalao as consistently recognizable subspecies.
The three older species names come, as was traditional, from literature. Androgeus was the name of the son of Minos of Crete in the story of the Minotaur, and of a soldier in the Trojan War. Epidaurus was the name of a long-ago town, whose residents said the town was named after a son of Apollo; two modern towns, neither built on the ruins of the ancient one, are also called Epidaurus. Laodocus was the name of several minor characters in Greek literature, most notably a soldier whose form was taken over by the goddess Athena in some stories of the Trojan War.
Iouanalao was the old Arawak name for St Lucia island, and some sources spell the butterfly subspecies name iouanalao. It sounds almost like "iguana land," which is said to be a fair translation. (Google likes to confuse this name with Ouanalao, the old name for St Barts island.) Reyesorum means "of or from Reyes," which could refer to several places in Mexico or to the winter holiday..
Heraclides androgeus androgeus is found from Guyana to Brazil, Suriname, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador. It tends to have relatively short tails and obscure spots on its hind wings.
The egg is a little yellow bead. This one was photographed in Costa Rica for Butterflies Of America.
Photo from A. Sourakov, who identified its source as somewhere on Hispaniola island. Hatchling caterpillars try to look like bird droppings.
Photo from A. Sourakov, Hispaniola. This is the second instar. Caterpillars keep up the bird dropping camouflage even as they grow too big to look like even goose droppings. They come in different combinations of black and white, taupe and gray, brown and yellow, green and cream, but usually show similar dark-and-light patterns overall.
Photo from A. Sourakov, Hispaniola. Startled at night, this one rounds on the camera, waving its large osmeterium. The hump on its back blurs into the dark so it looks different than it would by daylight. It is almost harmless even if swallowed, but predators do not always know this.
Andre Alves Thentomologist, whose Flickr post is written in Portuguese so I'm guessing he's posting from Brazil, caught a caterpillar in the act of eating leaves on his tangerine tree. It extended its osmeterium and exuded an odor he described as desagradavel (disagreeable).
In Spanish-speaking countries these caterpillars are called lagarta lengua-de-cobra, Cobra's Tongue Caterpillar, suggesting that they're one of the species that display their osmeteria readily--it's their distinguishing feature.
Photo from A. Sourakov, Hispaniola. This one is starting to pupate.
Photo anonymously donated to Butterflies Of America from Colombia. When the pupal shell hardens it looks like a broken twig.
Males join puddle parties with other butterflies of their own species, or in mixed groups. Sometimes unmated males pass their time by defending a "territory" from other males. The space chosen is not necessarily one females are likely to approach; since butterflies don't hurt each other when they "fight" these males are just trying to boost their status--which may or may not make any difference to females.
Females spend most of their time laying eggs, usually on young leaves of trees in the citrus family. Multiple overlapping generations mean that somewhere one of these butterflies is flying on any day of the year. They are less active during whatever their habitat has in the way of winter.
H.a. epidaurus is found in Mexico and Costa Rica, Trinidad, St Lucia, St Vincent islands (but not Jamaica), sometimes Ecuador, sometimes Venezuela, and it has strayed into Florida and Texas. Males may show even more yellow than those of H.a. androgeus; females usually have smaller spots but may show more iridescence overall.
Photo by Rudy Dodero, Costa Rica.
Photo by Sanchezgc, May, Ecuador. In some lights females can look brownish; in some they iridesce from blue-green to lime-green.
Photo by Marco Gottardo.
H.a. iuanalao is considered rare by those who recognize it as even being a subspecies. Its home is Martinique. Photos documenting its difference from other subspecies have yet to be published online.
H.a. laodocus is found in southern Brazil and Argentina. It may be smaller than other subspecies because it's further below the equator; the wingspan for this species ranges from four to six inches, but one page for this subspecies gives its wingspan simply as four inches. Only one female has ever been "collected." She looked similar to female H.a. androgeus. Living females show bright yellow, white, or even pale iridescent green spots on the fore wings.
Photo by Cecilia_Fer_Diaz, February, Argentina.
The male may have narrower and paler yellow bands and more little spots on the hind wings.
Photo by Desertnaturalist, March, Brazil.
Photo by Harturnoia, December, Brazil. The front side of the hump on this caterpillar's back looks quite surprising. It might discourage a hungry bird. (INaturalist has a painfully long and detailed photo essay showing how a pigeon wrestles an adult butterfly before eating the body out from between the wings.)
H.a. reyesorum is found in western Mexico. Males may show more black veins breaking up the ends of the yellow band across the wings.
Photo by Antonio_Robles (JoAnRoMa), October, Mexico.
Females of this subspecies show much less light color, more black or blackish base color, than other subspecies, and more small colored spots on the hind wings than some other subspecies.
Photo by Sergeyaslanov, August, Mexico.
Photo by Zihuadean, November, Mexico.
No subspecies seems to be threatened. The caterpillars may actually prefer native wild plants to commercially cultivated species.The adults are pollinators, although males also do some composting; both sexes are often photographed among colorful tropical flowers. As with other Heraclides, they are large enough that even one can seem like a pest, but this is less likely to happen when citrus fruit trees are planted in among other kinds of trees so that they don't promote overpopulation.
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