Swallowtail butterfly

Swallowtail butterfly

Scientific Classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Lepidoptera Suborder: Ditrysia Superfamily: Papilionoidea Family: Papilionidae
Genera
Subfamily Baroniinae Baronia Subfamily Parnassiinae Alancastria Archon Bhutantis Hypermnestra Luehdorfia Parnassius Serecinus Subfamily Papilioninae Atrophaneura Battus Byasa Chilasa Cressida Euryades Eurytides Graphium Iphiclides Lamproptera Losaria Meandrusa Mimoides Ornithoptera Pachliopta Papilio Parides Pharmacophagus Protesilaus Protographium Teinopalpus Trogonoptera Troides

Swallowtail butterflies comprise a group of 500 species of butterflies that belong to the taxonomic Family Papilionidae. All of the swallowtail butterflies are very colorful and beautiful, and come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors. Swallowtail butterflies are the largest group of butterflies.

Anatomy

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
(Papilio glaucus)

The swallowtail butterfly is colorful and has two tails which look like the divided tail of the swallow, which is where they get the name swallowtail. The two tails look like antenna to the predators so they bite there instead of the real end. These butterflies are very colorful, the females tending to be more colorful then the males. They have a colorful dot at the bottom of their wings to look like their head so the predators will attack the dot instead of their head. You will see many butterflies with the bottom of the wings missing or chewed because of this.

Reproduction

The sole purpose of the adult butterfly is to mate and lay eggs. The swallowtail butterfly reproduces by uniting their posterior ends. After they mate the female swallowtail butterfly goes to lay her eggs. The adult female butterfly lays up to 100 eggs in her lifetime. Some butterflies lay all their eggs on the same plant while others lay their eggs in different places.

Ecology

Green Banded Swallowtail(Papilio palinu)

The swallowtail butterfly lives everywhere except the arctics. They live on plants where they can raise their young and eat. The plants where they live and eat are different for the different types of swallowtails. Swallowtails live all over the world, known to be the most widespread butterfly ever. The swallowtail butterfly lives in the tropics (the Afrotropical Kite Swallowtails), in Europe, Asia (Japanese swallowtail), Africa, Australia, and North America.

Kite Swallowtails

Afrotropical Kite Swallowtails are the largest swallowtails in the world. They live mostly in the tropics. There are many different types of kite swallowtail, but there are only 39 different species of afrotropical kite swallowtails. Afrotropical Kite swallowtails are very interesting, though some of the species are very hard to find. It seems like most of these butterflies live in South American rainforests. The kite swallowtails are very colorful and only one species has a swallowtail, two tails that look like a swallow's tail, the rest have normal butterfly wings. The largest of these is the Queen Alexandra birdwing butterfly.