(This link-and-photo-loaded post may overload some browsers. If I receive reports of problems in the e-mail, I'll break it up for you.)
Arbitrarily I'm going to call an end to the genus Graphium, although we spent enough time there for scientists to propose reclassifying and renaming, meaning that there are valid Graphium species names we have yet to study. The article on Graphium wenlinga was frustrating to write and, no doubt, to read. In a few more years, as Asian scientists and naturalists publish more about the newly named species, it should be possible to write better articles about them.
Photo by Tania102, September, Veracruz.
Same butterfly, showing his gorgeous underside.
The next genus in the Swallowtail group is Heraclides, "Sons of Heracles." Heracles was said to have been the strongest man in all Greek history. He was not described or portrayed as a giant, though he was usually drawn with massive muscles. The Heraclides aren't always the biggest Swallowtails in their range, but they run large; they include Florida's "Giant Swallowtail."
Photo by Danisoroldani, September, Ecuador. Wings are often held away from the body and can even have a cut-away look, like the wings of some sphingid moths.
The first butterfly on the list is Heraclides anchisiades, the Ruby-Spotted Swallowtail. It is found from the southern tier of the United States to Chile. A fair bit of what's been published about it is written in Brazilian Portuguese. In the US it lives only in the southern point of Texas, but strays have been found as far north as Kansas and along our southern border.
Photo by Jeffharding, November, Peru. Like some of the tropical Asian Swallowtails, Heraclides can move their fore and hind wings independently.
Anchisiades means "son of Anchises." A few different characters in ancient literature were called Anchises. The best known character called Anchisiades was Aeneas, the Trojan warrior in the Iliad. Heraclides anchisiades is not very toxic to predators and looks very similar to Parides anchises, which is very toxic. Some scientists think Parides anchises, which moves slowly, also gains some benefit from resembling Heraclides anchisiades, which can lead birds a merry chase.
Basically a tropical butterfly, Heraclides anchisiades looks huge to North Americans, with wingspreads often over 4 inches and caterpillars often 3 inches long. It doesn't look much like the Giant Swallowtail but gets mistaken for it, anyway, because if it's not a swallowtail of giant size, what else could it be? It is also confused with India's "Mormon" swallowtails, some of whose color patterns it really does resemble, and with Hyalophora cecropia, which is just ridiculous.
It is well represented on social media, with many photos and videos available free to admire online. Here are some pretty videos.
This one's not so pretty but it does document how peaceable the caterpillars are. Subjected to all sorts of threatening, harassing behavior, most don't fight or flee, but freeze. One seems to be the designated osmeterium-waver for the family.
This family seems to have two osmeterium-wavers but most of the caterpillars will let themselves be picked off their perch in a solid sheet:
Papers have been published describing the parts of each section of its body, and its caterpillars. Google didn't do well translating this article into English, and the photos didn't show properly, but those of The Nephews who have tried to stay in touch with their grandmother's friends from Brazil may enjoy reading it in Portuguese.
It is fairly common in the places it frequents; sometimes its size, gregarious habits, and taste for ornamental shrubs and citrus trees, can make it a nuisance.
Male Heraclides are often observed pollinating, but they spend some time composting. They are sometimes found at puddles and occasionally, as shown above, lick sweat off human skin or clothes.
In South America Heraclides anchisiades is sometimes called Rosa de Luto, the Mourning Rose. Among North Americans who like fanciful names it has been called the Ruby Black Phoenix, or Ruby-Spotted Cattle Heart. (Like a good composter, Heraclides anchisiades may be found among cattle, fanning its wings, sometimes into a position like a Valentine heart. Or some might see a resemblance between the shape of some individual's spots and the shape of an actual beef heart. Whatever.)
Currently five subspecies are recognized. Each has been given a few other names.
H.anchisiades anchisiades may or may not have a white spot in the middle of the forewing. The size and shape of the reddish spot on the hind wing may vary. Their hind wings show short tails or none. Females tend to have slightly larger wings with slightly larger spots than males, though the size ranges of wings and spots overlap. They are found across the wide northern section of South America.
Photo by Joao_Pedro01, January, Brazil.
They are not nearly so abundantly documented as the subspecies capys and idaeus.
H.a. capys are less likely to have a white spot in the middle of the forewing, and are found further south, southern Brazil to Argentina. The forewing pattern may be better described as solid black toward the body, with lighter, sometimes translucent, grayish or brownish black toward the tips, and sometimes a border of paler spots between the two sections. (Capys was the name of one of Aeneas' friends, and also of his grandfather.)
Photo from ButterfliesOfAmerica.com.
Photo by Belweyermanns, April, Brazil.
Photo by Andressaultravioleta, April, Brazil.
Photo by Negromonte_Ion, August, Brazil. Caterpillars have that humped back all Swallowtail caterpillars have, but may be more likely to stretch out their necks ahead of their humps and make the humps less conspicuous. Some Swallowtail caterpillars seem to curl down into their humps and present themselves to the world as cones. (And yes, if you could say to any Swallowtail caterpillar, "You're
ugly!" would it say, "Thank you, I try," or "Thank You, Lord"? Caterpillars don't get any prizes for beauty.)
H.a. idaeus are found from the US to Colombia and Venezuela. They may have fewer, smaller, or no white spots on the forewings and more red spots on the hindwings. (In the Iliad, Idaeus was a messenger and mediator between the armies.)
Photo by Ag18, November, Mexico. The color is produced partly by the angle at which light hits the butterflies' wings; nevertheless, individuals can fade to brown and orange rather than black and red.
Photo by Harlin20, January, Honduras. Some photos of egg-laying females show black and pink colors, but in this case the female shows that tendency toward more faded, lower-contrast, browner coloring than the male. But it's only a tendency. She's not exactly hard to see.
Photo by Felipecastilla, October, Colombia. The female's abdominal section normally looks black, but shows rings of yellow underskin when she stretches to lay an egg. To predators, at this vulnerable moment she may look more like a wasp they don't want to eat.
Photo from ButterfliesOfAmerica.com. The second instar is yellowish green. Working efficiently as a family, they are munching up these leaves. They can be quite alarming, even threatening to a young or damaged tree.
Photo by Luisguillermomx for INaturalist, July, Yucatan. Instinct tells them that collectively they can disguise themselves as a knothole. These are "maturer" caterpillars.
Photo by Juancruzado, May, Nuevo Leon. One caterpillar in this group has been provoked to show his osmeterium.
Photo by That_Boy_Gustavo, July, Honduras.
Parides anchises caterpillars have that hard-to-swallow-looking texture with lots of little bristles all over.
Heraclides anchisiades are comparatively almost smooth, at least pebbly rather than branched, but there's a resemblance. Subspecies
idaeus sometimes show a vestige of the girdle effect
Parides, Battus, and
Atrophaneura caterpillars share.
H.a. lamasi are relatively little known. They are found from western Ecuador to northwestern Peru. (Lamas is the name of a place in Peru.)
Photo by Marleenc, April, Ecuador.'
Two perfect museum specimens and a few more live action shots of H.a. lamasi:
H.a. philastrius are found on Trinidad island. The spot on the forewing may be yellow. (Philastrius was a fourth century author, the Bishop of Brescia; for a while he was remembered as a saint, but few remember him at all now.) INaturalist doesn't even have a page for them.
Museum specimen from ButterfliesOfAmerica. Scallops are consistently irregular, with the inner section of the hind wing being shorter so that the next section looks like a short "tail," as if these butterflies were trying to grow "tails" and not quite succeeding.
Adult butterflies are pollinators, especially attracted to flowers in the genera Hamelia, Igna, Ixora, Lantana, and Senecio.
Photo by Andres Hernandez for smithsonian.com. The flower is
Ixora chinensis.
Eggs resemble round yellow beads. This is one Swallowtail species that seems to know the benefit of safety in numbers. Although the caterpillars eat their own eggshells and shed skins, they don't eat those of other caterpillars. Female butterflies are thus free to lay up to seventy eggs at a time, all on one leaf, and as the caterpillars hatch out, they line up side by side, touching one another, and munch munch munch until they burst. Though good for the survival of the caterpillars, this is not always good for their host plants. They can be very efficient feeders.
Generally they rest during the heat of the day on a trunk or root, usually of their host plant, and eat at night. Litters may mix.
Photo by Stevenw12339, January, Yucatan.
Clumps of full-sized caterpillars found on one tree have included over 100 individuals. Full-sized Heraclidd anchisiades caterpillars are the size of adult human fingers; these clumps look massive and can do as much damage as they look as if they would, though the trees recover.
They're also quite good at the gross-out as survival strategy many large caterpillars use. There are subspecies variations; all tend to be yellowish and can manage to resemble both tiny snakes, and large unhealthy bird droppings, at the same time. Like all Swallowtail caterpillars, they have humped backs that conceal osmeteria, which in this species are orange.
Individuals separate from the crowd to pupate; pupae are camouflaged as short thick broken twigs.
Photo by Pedrosantoss, August, Brazil.
Photo by Macelocosta, April, Brazil.
Although the caterpillars hatch and molt more or less in synchrony, with most of the litter maturing and pupating at the same time (sometimes a few are still side by side), they don't all emerge from the chrysalis at the same time. For no obvious reason some eclose in a few days, and others wait for months, one or two butterfly generations. Anyway, adults find mates, and the whole thing starts again...
Photo by Fabiobabi, February, Brazil.
This blogger claims to have reared one living butterfly from an egg surgically removed from a dead female butterfly:
As the timing of these photos shows, these tropical butterflies are active continuously throughout the year. The life cycle takes a few months. There are local generational cycles, but there are always anchisiades at every stage of life, somewhere. The life cycle of tropical plants takes place at a similarly furious pace. Caterpillars may seem to be killing a plant when they are actually pruning it back to a rate of growth that allows it to survive.
Still, a phalanx of caterpillars who instinctively form part if they can't form all of a knothole shape, when they're on a plant you are trying to cultivate, can be an alarming sight. They may be part of the Creator's plan for the way tropical rain forests work. They are not part of the chemical agriculturists' plan for the way a factory farm should work. They can't possibly be good for immediate crop yields.
Photo by Sckell, September, Brazil.
There is a Green strategy that actually benefits individual butterflies as well as farmers: stopping monocropping.
When it's easy for butterflies to overpopulate, never having to travel in search of the caterpillars' next meal or the butterflies' next host plant, they often do overpopulate. An unthinking appetite for dead skin keeps many large butterflies and moths from overpopulating--by producing inadvertent, and in some species it's not even always inadvertent, cannibalism. This control mechanism does not operate in Heraclides anchisiades. Siblings get some safety benefit from lining up side by side, so they stay in close-knit families, even merging with other families in heavily populated areas.
So Nature rolls out a different control mechanism. Heraclides anchisiades are vulnerable to infestations by mites and fungi. There is, D. Lewis observed, abundant documentation of these parasites. This recent paper seems to have been first published online.
You can find individual butterflies that look "crusted" or "rusted" with layers of parasites covering large sections of their wings or bodies. From citrus farmers' point of view this may be a lovely sight to behold. Papers have been published about rearing the butterflies in laboratories to cultivate more virulent strains of parasites.
Or just getting control of their population, thinning it down, in order to exploit the butterflies commercially. So many of the Asian Papilios, Parides, and Atrophaneuras that look similar are rare or endangered. Couldn't anchisiades wings be exported for use in making junk jewelry in Taiwan?
A Colombian community farm-reared the butterflies successfully for use in junk jewelry.
For the butterflies it means death, and probably discomfort that the butterflies can't do anything about. Individual butterflies are probably happier when their populations are sparse enough to keep parasitic infections down.
Humans can help by planting, instead of acres of solid citrus trees one after another, mixed orchards where trees planted next to each other don't host the same butterfly species. Keeping Heraclides populations sparse helps maintain a healthy distance among butterflies, reducing infections and also reducing the number of caterpillars feeding on any specific tree.
