A Butterfly Post

by Priscilla King

This week's butterfly is one of a large group of subtropical and tropical Asian butterflies whose fore and hind wings, as spread out in a museum's display case, form an x shape. Their nickname is "windmills," With a wingspan of typically 4 inches, up to 6 inches, dasarada is one of the larger species, so it's often called the Great Windmill.
Its scientific name has been changed twice. At first naturalists thought that a swallowtail is a swallowtail, and classified all of them in the genus Papilio. Then they split the dark-winged, red-bodied Asian group off into the genus Atrophaneura, and recently they subdivided Atrophaneura into a few more new genera, such as Byasa. For all of these genera, more information is likely to be available when you look up Atrophaneura, but newer information is found when you look up a new genus name like Byasa.

The name dasarada sounds like words and names in several Indian languages, and the butterfly is most often found in India. (Sub-species are found in Thailand, China, and other countries.). Because the dark wings looked funereal to early naturalists, and they had already established a tradition of naming Swallowtails after characters in ancient myths and legends, they formed a tradition of naming the Atrophaneura group after figures associated with death. "Dasarada" may identify this butterfly with King Dasaratha, who, according to some sources, married sixty thousand wives (presumably in a symbolic way). According to the story Dasaratha lived and had children with only three wives. One of those children was Rama, who was said to be a mortal incarnation of a Hindu god. The heroic feats Rama undertook to rescue his bride, who had been kidnapped, were seen as symbolic of virtue itself. Dasaratha was remembered as a tragic character; he let envious people persuade him to banish Rama from the palace, and he was very sorry. He and his household were often chosen as subjects when artists wanted to create imaes of sorrow. Dasaratha's punishment was that he had no chance to be reconciled with Rama before he died, so he was associated with a funeral--his own--and thus would have seemed to fit into the naming tradition for this group of species.

If this butterfly reminded anyone of a funeral, it must have been an ancient king's. Though dark, it looks positively gaudy.



Photo donated to Wikipedia By Balakrishnan Valappil - Byasa dasarada (GREAT WINDMILL)_2012_10_11_10_10_57_kamlang, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67293755 .

The species as a whole is neither rare nor endangered, but some recognized sub-species are rare and may be endangered.




Photo donated to Pinterest by projectnoah.org. These two are probably drinking buddies (drinking water from wet sand) rather than a couple, but male and female dasarada look pretty much alike.

All the Atrophaneura group feed on plants that are somewhat toxic to humans; dasarada eats Aristolochia griffini. They get their vivid "warning" colors from toxins found in the plant. They're toxic only if swallowed, but they're among a very few butterflies who retain the ability some Swallowtail caterpillars have to emit an odor if disturbed. People who have traditionally agreed that they look beautiful also agree that they small nasty if you get too close.





Unlike the colorful northern swallowtails, in the /Atrophaneura group even the males are pollinators rather than composters. They live in woods and are often photographed pollinating flowers high in trees.






Photo donated to inaturalist.org by J.M. Gang.

Though they are definitely butterflies rather than moths, some of the big butterflies share features with the big moths. The inner edges of Byasa hindwings are furry, and the pupa can squeak if disturbed.


In its final instar the caterpillar develops an osmeterium, the "stinking horns" or "forked tongue" some American swallowtails and push out of their humped backs to confuse bothersome birds. All caterpillars survive by looking repulsive and dasarada caterpillas apparently do this so well that nobody wants to photograph them. The mature caterpillar about to pupate is described as gray with black lines and reddish warts. The osmeterium is orange.

🦋

Thank you Priscilla!