Lime butterfly

CUBE chat
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🆂︎🆄︎🅼︎🅼︎🅰︎🆁︎🆈︎ :-

Name of the butterfly : Lime butterfly
(The butterfly is also known as the lemon butterfly, lime swallowtail, and chequered swallowtail.)
Host plant : ɪɴᴅɪᴀɴ ʙᴀᴇʟ(In malayalam koovalam)

Location : pazhuvil, Thrissur, kerala.
Data collector: Seethalakshmi C. R. CUBE SN Clg Nattika.

Objective : ᴛᴏ ꜱᴛᴜᴅy ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪꜰᴇ ᴄyᴄʟᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴜᴛᴛᴇʀꜰʟy.

Set up :
I took a trasparent plastic cover for set up
Then i give indian beel tree leaf for feeding the larva.

Observations :-

Day :1
Date : 26/4/22
Time: 11:00pm
𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚛 𝚘𝚗 27 𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚊𝚢 𝚘𝚗 𝖎𝖓𝖉𝖎𝖆𝖓 𝖇𝖆𝖊𝖑 𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚎.
Physical appearence of the caterpillar : Greenish body with yellow lines with black marks on the head part.
Size :~3cm.

Day:2
Date:27/4/22
Time 12:04 am
There was no change in its colour and shape…

Day :3
Date :28/4/22.
Time : 4:46 pm.
The body colour of the larvae is green body with yellow lines on the head part as well as some yellowshish white patches on the thorax part as well as abdomen part.

Day :4
Date :29/4/22
Time:11:37 am
The caterpillar starts hanging on the stick piece, there was thread like str was produced by caterpillar. At that time its colour is greenish body. Its starts to pupating.

BREAKING NEWS was happens…:star_struck:
Time:11:00 pm.
Date:29/4/22

The colour of pupae is turn into greenish to brown.
This miracle is also happens after 12 hrs.

Day: 5
Date:30/4/22
Time : 12:33 am.
There was no change in pupae.

Day 6 to 12 th…
Date :may 1st to may 7 th…
It exist on its pupal stage…

Day: 14
Date :8/5/22
Finally, the miracle was happened …
Today morning the butterfly was emerged…:star_struck::star_struck:
It was Lime butterfly…:butterfly:

Physical appearence of the butterfly :
The background colour is black. A broad, irregular yellow band is found on the wings above, which is broken in the case of the forewing. Besides this, the butterfly has a large number of irregular spots on the wing. The upper hindwing has a red tornal spot with blue edging around it.

Conclusion : -
The butterfly was lime butterfly.
And also i got the larvae of lime butterfly from it’s 5 th instar stage.
Reference :

1-Papilio demoleus - Wikipedia

2- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321873959_Studies_on_some_aspects_of_the_biology_and_ecology_of_Citrus_butterfly_Papilio_demoleus_Papilionidae_Lepidoptera_on_citrus_in_Vietnam

Questions :-

  1. why its pupal colour different from other butterflies pupae like common mormon?
    Lime butterflies pupae
    was brown in colour…

@Arunan sir, @KiranyadavR ma’am, @magpie ma’am, @himanshu joshi sir, @Abhi0703, @seema suthar, @Vishnupriya10, @saswathy679, @Theertha and others…

2). What are difference btw the caterpillar of lime and common mormon?
Etc…

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Why do you think that pupae color should be same of Lime Butterfly and Common mormon? Do most of butterfly have same pupal color?

How closely is Lime butterfly and Common mormon Butterfly related? Do they belong to same genus or something?

2 Likes
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Because both of them are host plants are the same ( indian bael )
So that’s why i think so

The appearance of common mormon eggs is similar to the eggs of common lime butterflies, to the point that distinguishing the eggs of these two species is difficult.

As well as their 5 instar stage larvae almost similar.

https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Papilio_polytes/#:~:text=The%20appearance%20of%20common%20mormon,while%20common%20mormons%20do%20not.

@Abhi0703

2 Likes
5

Nicely documented.

How did you get to know the name of butterfly?

2 Likes
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Thankyou @KiranyadavR ma’am
I got the name from Wikipedia

The butterfly is also known as the lime butterfly,[1][2] lemon butterfly, lime swallowtail, and chequered swallowtail.[2]

Reference : Papilio demoleus - Wikipedia

3 Likes
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How are we sure this is not Common Mormon butterfly which use similar host plants for egg laying? @2020ugchsncnseethala

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The appearance of common mormon eggs is similar to the eggs of common lime butterflies, to the point that distinguishing the eggs of these two species is difficult. However, common lime butterflies lay their eggs on the axial part of the leaf, the stems, or on the thorns, while common mormons do not.

By using this way of method we can confirm this
@Arunan sir!

Reference : https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Papilio_polytes/#:~:text=The%20appearance%20of%20common%20mormon,while%20common%20mormons%20do%20not

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