Butterfly of the Week: Heraclides Epenetus

This week's Giant Swallowtail is as little known as last week's species is well known. Heraclides (formerly Papilio) epenetus lives in Ecuador and seems good at avoiding humans.

Possibly because of its retiring habits, this species was not named after the usual war hero, but after a saint. Epenetus of Carthage is somewhat obscure in Western Europe and the United States; he is remembered mostly by the Eastern Orthodox church. The name is mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans. According to various non-Biblical writers, Epenetus was one of the seventy disciples Jesus sent out as advance publicity, who are generally thought to be Jewish, and/or he came from Ephesus and was the first Asian convert, or maybe he managed to be both. He spent his mature years in Carthage and was elected bishop there.

The butterfly named after him is one of the "giant" swallowtails, with a wingspread of about four inches, sometimes more. Its only known host plants are citrus trees. Nevertheless, its life history is undocumented. 

Photo by Josh Vandermeulen, Ecuador, February.

Photo by Jonathanaguirre, Ecuador, May. A female? It seems interested in leaves...

According to https://www.loja-zamora.eu/es/fiche-papillon/001-Papilionidae/001-Papilioninae/005-Papilionini/001-Heraclides/022-epenetus/_ , male and female can look pretty much alike, but the male may have a brown, yellow, and orange color scheme while the female is more charcoal gray, white, and red. Both sexes have on the upper wing surface, and to a lesser extent on the under wing surface, a row of pale-colored spots outlining the difference between inner wing and wing tip. These spots may or may not be conspicuous, and the inner wing surface may or may not be much darker than the tips. 

Caterpillars are said to be gregarious and eat citrus tree leaves, but are not common enough to have been described as a pest species. Their preferred species may be wild trees; caterpillars who live in the treetops in forests are easy for humans to under-look. While biig tropical caterpillars have enormous appetites and eat enormous quantities of leaves, tropical plants grow fast and may even benefit from an occasional leaf stripping.