A few tropical species and I.Ds help!

[Dave McCormick]

OK First, I have been looking through some of the tropical butterfly/moth images I have and these are a few I need help with, I think I have one or two right, but don't have much information on them:

Is this a Coca Mort Bleu? It had a purplish upperside, but it kept its wings closed a lot:



Moth Lyssa zampa from family: Uraniinae Anyone have any information on it? It has a really whitish furry part under its head:



I am nearly sure the butterfly fling on right of this shot is the mockers swallowtail, but can anyone tell what both of them are?



Mother of Pearl Butterfly:



Emerald Swallowtail?



What type of Owl Butterfly is this, I know there are quite a number of Caligo genus butterflies, many looking quite similar:



Are my I.Ds correct? Any information on these butterflies would help also. Thanks in advance.

[m_galathea]

Hi Dave, the "Emerald Swallowtail" is correct - Papilio palinurus. If you are after info on it then here are two articles which will give you tell you the basics about the photonic structures on its scales:

CURRENT BIOLOGY 16 (16): R621-R623 AUG 22 2006
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag/pe ... B_2006.pdf

PHYSICS WORLD 17 (2): 35-39 FEB 2004
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag/pe ... W_2004.pdf

If you want some advanced reading on the P.palinurus structures the you'll enjoy this one:

P. Vukusic, J. R. Sambles, C. R. Lawrence, R. J. Wootton (2001) Sculpted-multilayer optical effects in two species of Papilio butterfly. Applied Optics 40:1116-1125

You don't need to understand the maths to understand what's going on, and you can get an online copy here:
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag/bu ... apilio.pdf

AH

[Dave McCormick]

Thanks m_galathea, good information there.

[Padfield]

The first butterfly is genus Eryphanis - you might want to track down some pictures with a Google image search to get the species. I don't know if the common name you give is right or not but I think you should always at least include Latin names on websites, especially if you hope a few foreigners might pay you a visit!

Guy

PS - There's information on the genus here, but without many pictures:

http://www.funet.fi/pub/sci/bio/life/in ... index.html

[Dave McCormick]

Thanks guy. Oh the first one I thought Purple mort bleu (Eryphanis Polyxena)

Mockers Swallowtail (Papilio dardanus) - female forms mimic various poision species of Danaus and the non mimic version looks like male.

For the first one I would just like to know what sub family it belongs to. I know it belongs in the Nymphalidae somewhere

[Padfield]

Eryphanis is in the family Nymphalidae, as you say. The subfamily is Morphinae, tribe Brassolini, subtribe Brassolina! In other words, it's quite closely related to the owl butterflies, of the genus Caligo, which are also in the subtribe Brassolina, and slightly more distantly related to the blue Morphos, in the tribe Morphini.

Guy

[Dave McCormick]

Thanks Guy, I have to find my tropical butterfly and moth book which I lost a long while ago and cant find, sure its in there somewhere.