This week we consider the very rare, endangered, Brazilian Swallowtail, Heraclides himeros. Himeros is Greek for "desire," which was sometimes personified as an attendant of Aphrodite. A Greek writer distinguished between himeros and pothos by saying that Greeks felt himeros for things they could reasonably hope to enjoy, like the company of a living spouse or a meal after a day's work, and pothos for things they might never be able to enjoy, like the company of someone who had died.
Photo by Zeviniciuss, Brazil, July.
Will the desire to see this butterfly, alive, eventually become an example of pothos?
Early naturalists proposed a few other names for this species. It just missed being named in honor of Mentor, Lycophron, or Herodotus himself.
It's endangered partly because it lives on Esenbeckia leiocarpa, "Brazilian boxwood," which, unlike English boxwood, can grow over 100 feet tall. This tree is endangered by habitat loss, and, since it is Heraclides himeros's habitat, the survival of the butterflies depends on the survival of their host trees.
Photo from Joao Medeiros for Wikipedia.
Brazilian Boxwood is valuable because it resists decay even when exposed to weather. It grows straight and tall, seedlings typically about 7 feet tall two years after they sprout. As a result it's been over-harvested. People living in Brazil are encouraged to plant these trees, which thrive in partial shade....and to try to conserve their rain forests, which as we all know are being gobbled up at an inexcusable pace.
Here is a fact sheet on the care and encouragement of Brazilian Boxwoods:
But will the butterfly populations rebound if the tree populations do? Hard to say. Heraclides himeros seems to be one of those big butterflies that nature always intended to be rare. It was found only in scattered specific places.While the butterflies sometimes flitted as far as Argentina, there were five known breeding populations. The species is believed to require a large amount of space to support a viable colony.
Walter Rothschild observed that these populations included two distinguishable subspecies. At least the males showed consistent differences. Rothschild wasn't sure that he'd ever seen a female specimen of the subspecies baia. In his time H. himeros himeros was much more common.
Today H.h. baia may be less rare. While both subspecies disappeared from much of their original range, baia expanded into a new range. Both subspecies remain very rare and seldom seen. They might already be extinct. They were in a certain place last year but they were so few that there might be none in that place this year. The individual photographed above was alive in 2023.
Photo by Thiagoh7, Brazil, June 2019.
(Both butterflies photographed above were baia. Subspecies himeros differs from baia mainly in the placement of the red eye spots on the hind wings; it's photographed at
https://www.gov.br/icmbio/pt-br/centrais-de-conteudo/publicacoes/publicacoes-diversas/livro_vermelho_2018_vol7.pdf (page 89 of 730)
For the individual butterflies that have been "collected" and studied, it was possible to identify consistent differences between males' and females' color patterns, but from a distance males and females looked alike. This Blogspot post shows museum pieces with male and female patterns:
The wingspread is about four inches; females seem to average slightly larger than males.
Nothing is known about their life cycle. Nobody has yet reared this species and documented what the eggs, larvae, or pupae look like. Are females really much rarer than males in nature, or merely much better at hiding from humans and keeping themselves rare in museum collections? Who can say?
A Brazilian government study documents that Monsanto was at least questioned extensively by the government,in fairly recent years. Monsanto was never a prime suspect in the decline of this species. Himeros are believed to have been mostly forest dwellers rather than farm nuisances.
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