Queen
Alexandra's Birdwing, Ornithoptera
alexandrae (Rothschild, 1907) male.
NMK
World, Japan.
Broadcast on October 6, 2024 / Available until January 6, 2025.
World's
Largest Butterfly - Queen Alexandra's Birdwing, Papua New Guinea
Darwin's Amazing Animals
New Guinea is a haven for butterflies with nearly 1,000
species.
Moving through dense jungle in search of the largest of
them all,
the Darwin team wonders how something so big can be so
hard to find!
History: The species was
discovered in 1906 by Albert Stewart Meek, a
collector employed by Walter Rothschild to
collect natural history specimens from New
Guinea. In the next year, Rothschild named the
species in honour of Alexandra of Denmark.
Although the first specimen was taken with the
aid of a small shotgun, Meek soon discovered the
early stages and bred out most of the first
specimens.
Description:
Male: Male: There is sexual dimorphism in this
species. The wings are long with angular apices.
They are iridescent bluish green with a black
central band. There is a pronounced sex brand.
The underside is green or blue green with black
veins. Males are smaller than females. The
abdomen is bright yellow. The wingspan of the
males can be approximately 20 cm (8 in), but more
usually about 16 cm (6.3 in). A spectacular form
of the male is form atavus, which has gold spots
on the hindwings.
For explanation of terms, see External morphology
of Lepidoptera.
Female: Are larger than males with markedly
rounder, broader wings. The female can reach, and
slightly exceed, a wingspan of 25 to 28 cm (10 to
11 in), a body length of 8 cm (3.1 in) and a body
mass of up to 12 g (0.42 oz), all enormous
measurements for a butterfly. The female has
brown wings with white markings arranged as two
rows of chevrons. The hindwings are brown with a
submarginal line of centred yellow triangles. The
body is cream coloured and there is a small
section of red fur on the brown thorax.
Wingspan: Is the largest species of butterfly in
the world, with females reaching wingspans
slightly in excess of 25 to 28 cm.
Imago: A dorsal photograph of the Holotype female
of Queen Alexandra's Birdwing Butterfly.
The adults may live for three months or more and
have few predators, excluding large orb weaving
spiders (Nephila species) and some small birds.
Adults feed at flowers providing a broad platform
for the adults to land on, including Hibiscus.
The adults are powerful fliers most active in the
early morning and again at dusk when they
actively feed at flowers.
Males also patrol areas of the host plants for
newly emerged females early in the morning.
Females may be seen searching for host plants for
most of the day. Courtship is brief but
spectacular; males hover above a potential mate,
dousing her with a pheromone to induce mating.
Receptive females will allow the male to land and
pair, while unreceptive females will fly off or
otherwise discourage mating. Males are strongly
territorial and will see off potential rivals,
sometimes chasing small birds as well as other
birdwing species. The flight is usually high in
the rainforest canopy, but both sexes descend to
within a few meters of the ground while feeding
or laying eggs.
Eggs: The eggs are large, light yellow and
flattened at the base, fixated to the surface on
which they are laid by a bright-orange substance.
Under ideal conditions, the female Queen
Alexandra's Birdwing is capable of laying over
240 eggs throughout its life.
Larva: Pararistolochia (some species were
formerly Aristolochia)
Newly emerged larvae eat their own eggshells
before feeding on fresh foliage. The larva is
black with red tubercles and has a cream-coloured
band or saddle in the middle of its body.
Pupa: The pupa is golden yellow or tan in colour
with black markings. Male pupae may be
distinguished by a faint charcoal patch on the
wing cases; this becomes a band of special scales
in the adult butterfly called a sex brand. The
time taken for this species to develop from egg
to pupa is approximately six weeks, with the
pupal stage taking a month or more. Adults emerge
from the pupae early in the morning while
humidity is still high, as the enormous wings may
dry out before they have fully expanded if the
humidity drops.
Foodplants: Larvae of this species feed on the
shell from which they hatched and then start to
extract nutrients from pipe vines of the genus
Pararistolochia (family Aristolochiaceae),
including P. dielsiana and P. schlecteri. They
feed initially on fresh foliage of the host
plants and their own eggs, ultimately causing
ringbark to the vine before pupating. Plants of
the family Aristolochiaceae contain aristolochic
acids in their leaves and stems. This is believed
to be a potent vertebrate poison and is
accumulated by larvae during their development.
Distribution: This birdwing is restricted to the
forests of the Oro Province in eastern Papua New
Guinea.
CITES: The
species is endangered and one of only four
insects to be listed on Appendix I of CITES, making
commercial international trade illegal. The other
three insects listed are butterflies as well.
They are the Parides burchellanus, Papilio
homerus, Ornithoptera
alexandrae, Achillides
chikae chikae.
Hun har skrevet bogen
"Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of
the World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler" i 2011. The illegal trafficking of
butterflies brings in around $200 million a year.
The kingpin of butterfly smuggling is a man
named Yoshi Kojima — he had
butterfly collectors all over the world, and he
knew his way around every rule and regulation. In
her new book, Winged
Obsession, author Jessica
Speart follows
a rookie agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, who goes undercover to bust Yoshi
Kojima.
___________________________
List of
butterflies of Papua New Guinea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Location
of Papua New Guinea:
This is a list of
butterflies of Papua New Guinea. This list
includes species recorded from mainland Papua New
Guinea, but also all islands that are part of the
country, such as the Trobriand Islands, the
D'Entrecasteaux Islands, the Louisiade
Archipelago and the Bismarck Archipelago. List of
butterflies: 320 species.
Description:
Male: The forewings are black. Next to the wing
tip there is a large, green spot. There is a
green area around the thorax. The underside of Ornithoptera
victoriae is black. The green spot
and the green area are combined. At the wing
leading edge there is a large black spot. The
veins are black. The hindwings are green. The
edge of wing is black. At the outer edge there
are three golden spots. The underside is green.
The veins are partly black. At the outer edge
there are three golden spots. Between these
golden spots there are black spots. The ventral
side of the wings are of very similar appearance
to the dorsal side.
The abdomen is yellowish or white. The head and
thorax are black.
Female: The general colour of the female is black
or dark brown. There are many white spots on the
forewings. Next to the thorax there are two
yellow stripes. On the hindwings there are two
chains of white marks. There is also one yellow
spot. As with the male, the ventral side of the
wings are quite similar in appearance to the
dorsal side.
Typical of birdwing butterflies, the female
covers the upper range of the wingspan. It is
significantly larger than the male.
Wingspan: 150–180 mm
Behavior: Pupation occurs under a leaf of a tree
or shrub growing some distance from the
hostplant, seldom on the hostplant itself.
Pupal;The pupal stage ranges from 30 to 33 days.
The average sex ratio with specimens emerged was
nearly 45% males with minor variations on
different islands. On Banika, one of the Russell
Islands in the Central Solomons,
was found localized along
some stretches of the beach where Aristolochia
tagala grows mixed with
undergrowth of coconut plantations. Average size
of the butterflies here
is slightly smaller than those of Guadalcanal.
Foodplants: On the islands of Guadalcanal and
Nggela,
the early stages of the two species live together
on Aristolochia tagala. Chan, but on other
islands they were found on separate hosts, which
they did not seem to share. Reports from Forestry
Department, Honiara, tell of the almost complete
disappearance of both species from the Honiara
region due to extensive cutting of the
undergrowth and also because of reckless
collecting of adults and their early stages.
Distribution: Is a birdswing butterfly
of the family Papilionidae, found
in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea
(Bougainville Island only).
Queen Victoria's Birdwing, Ornithoptera
victoriae (Gray, 1856).
Solomon Is. (Guadalcanal, Florida, Ngella and
Tulagi isl.)
ssp. epiphanes (Schmid,
1970). Solomon Is. (San Christobal isl.)
ssp. isabellae
(Rothschild, 1901). Solomon Is. (Santa Ysabel
isl.)
ssp. regis
(Rothschild, 1895). Solomon Is. (Bougainville
isl.)
ssp. reginae (Salvin,
1888). Solomon Is. (Malayta isl.)
ssp. rubianus
(Rothschild, 1904). Solomon Is. (Kolombangaro,
Kulumbangra or Nduke isl, Rendova, Rubiana, Gizo
and Ranongga?) Troides × allottei
(Rothschild, 1914).
Synonyms: Aetheoptera victoriae.
Ornithoptera urvilliana × victoriae Hybrid.
Solomon Is. (Bougainville isl.).
Hybrid: What was originally described as Ornithoptera
allotei,
is a natural hybrid between Ornithoptera
victoriae and Ornithoptera
priamus ssp. urvillianus.
CITES: Ornithoptera
victoriae is, like all other birdswings butterflies,
a strictly protected species. It is listed in
Appendix II of CITES, meaning that international
trade is restricted to captive-raised specimens.
The Solomon Islands, which include a significant
part of this species' range, only became a
signatory to CITES in 2007,
while Papua New Guinea has been a signatory for
many years. Despite the fact that the Solomon
Islands has engaged the CITES
controls, a vestigial United States Fish and
Wildlife Service ruling has not been updated and
so importation of O. victoriae from the
Solomon Islands (but not from Bougainville or
Papua New Guinea) to the United States remains
prohibited.
Troides (Hübner,
1819) Birdwings. Wikipedia. Birdswings, Ornithoptera;
Er blandt verdens største dagsommerfugle.
___________________________
Common Birdwing, Troides
helena ssp. cerberus (C. & R. Felder, 1865) male.
on Flame Tree or Flamoyant Tree in spanish Llama del Bosque, Delonix regia.
Lamai,
Koh Samui, Thailand january 14, 2011. Photographer: Erni Boesen
