This was in the staircase of my house, i dont know exactly the size of the butterfly but i know that each step has about 17.5cm, so probably the butterfly have about 5~10cm.
Here is the butterfly's foto in the step:
This specim was found today, in the north region of Portugal and it seems that specimen is not a local specie:
There is the exact location of the region (the region in the red circle)
I'm not an expert, but in my opinion this a butterfly from the papilionidae's family, probably a near cousin of the Papilio machaon, so probably it's from the Papilio genus in adition this specimen seems to be a male.
Can someone help me to identify the specie and the gender?
It is a Scarce Swallowtail.
It is of the pale Iberian race (typical for where found).
It is widespread throughout the Iberian peninsular.
It is a beautiful specimen, but not rare.
Well done, keep your eyes peeled and you ought to see more.
Roger Harding
Sorry to correct anyone Roger, but it's actually a Spanish Swallowtail - Iphiclides feisthamelii (as opposed to podalirius). I only know because I have a house near Marbella and my interest in butterflies started there.
It was my impression that feisthameli is the Iberain (and S. French)sub-species of the Scarce Swallowtail. This from Collins Field Guide (Tolman & Lewington)
However, I notice that Lafranchis' Butterflies of Europe has it as a seperate species as you say.
Tolman (Photographic Guide to the Butterflies of Britain & Europe) doesn't list the sub-species at all.
An earlier Collins guide (Higgins & Hargreaves) 1983, lists it as a sub-species of the Scarce Swallowtail as well.
The Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Britain & Europe - Whalley & Lewington, 1981 also lsts it as a seperate species - so, the jury is out.
I have no other European field guides in my ibrary, so can find no other references.
Over to Padfield I think!?
Roger Harding
I use Lafranchis only, so please excuse me if I sounded overly confident. It is because he is so sure that I was. This is, as you say, the paler version with the yellow fore-wing costa...feisthamelii. According to Lafranchis it covers Spain,Portugal and extreme southern France, and podalirius does the rest of (warm) Europe.
From what I can see, the more recent and the more continental books reckon feisthameli as a distinct species, and the older and more English books call it a subspecies.
Tolman says in his 1997 field guide (which is what I use as my Bible) that experimental data on biochemistry and hybridization is lacking and sticks to subspecies. The older Higgins and Riley guides all say subspecies, as does Chinery. The Tolman photographic doesn't mention feisthameli. Lafranchis 1 (that is, his first guide, in French, to the butterflies of France, Belgium and Luxembourg) calls it a subspecies but mentions that some consider it a species. He refers to differences in the chorion and genitalia. By Lafranchis 2 (his English field guide to the whole of Europe) he has changed his mind and calls it a species, without comment. I don't have Lafranchis 3 yet (the new version of the European field guide, in French). Kudrna calls feisthamli a species but doesn't distinguish between the two in his mapping scheme because the data is missing. FINALLY, Fauna Europaea (the authority Pete uses for taxonomy in this site) goes for species. Perhaps those missing experiments Tolman wanted have been done.
It is worth remembering that although the concept of 'species' is reasonably well-defined and very useful, it is not a natural taxon. It is something we impose on infinitely wonderful nature in our perpetual mission to bring her within the reach of our minds. Probably, the only natural taxa are the individual (though this taxon breaks down for many classes of organism) and the actual breeding community. The ongoing process of speciation, both temporally and spatially (clines) means there often isn't a 'right' answer to the question of species or subspecies even given our definition - indeed, these might be inappropriate words ('superspecies' and 'semispecies' are often used, particular of recently separated island organisms).
One of my philosophy students pointed out that God, if he exists, surely doesn't need our reductive, generalising, classificatory approach to nature - he just knows every single part of nature exactly as it is, in itself. We can't do that, so we have to define concepts and fit nature into them as best we can, to make her comprehensible and manageable.
