Subject: Beauty! Is it a Giant Swallowtail?
Location: Coryell County, central Texas
March 18, 2013 2:52 pm
This beautiful, large swallowtail was in constant motion. Is it a Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes)? Photo taken today, warm weather at 80 degrees. I think the plant is Purple Verbena. Thank you!
Signature: Ellen

Giant Swallowtail

Hi Again Ellen,
You are correct that this is a Giant Swallowtail, and they truly are beautiful butterflies.

Giant Swallowtail

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Subject: Lazy butterfly
Location: India
January 23, 2013 7:29 am
I found this butterfly in the lowest stem of my plant ! I put it on the flower n then she is not moving frm there ! Is she sick or normal
N wats the kind of it ??
Signature: Creepyluv

Male Common Mormon

Dear Creepyluv,
We have identified your butterfly as a male Common Mormon, Papilio polytes.  You can compare your butterfly to the mounted specimen pictured on the National Taiwan University Insect Museum Digital Archives Project website.  The Butterfly Circle website has nice images of the entire life cycle and provides this information:  “The female of the species is dimorphic, f. polytes, is a good mimic of the Common Rose. As the Common Mormon is not impalatable to birds, the female mimics the poisonous Common Rose for protection from its predators.”  According to the Kronforst Lab at the University of Chicago:  “Papilio polytes, a widely ranging Asian swallowtail, has a single male form and several female forms, most of which mimic locally abundant and toxic Pachliopta butterflies. There is a dominance hierarchy between female forms, the non-mimetic female form being recessive to all others.”  Now to addressing your other question.  This looks like a “young” butterfly since it has undamaged wings, and it might have just recently emerged from its chrysalis.  Also, if it has been cooler than normal recently, or if it was found early in the morning, it might explain the lethargy.

Thankeww ! Am fascinated that my backyard Curry Leave Plant has more that 7 caterpillars of common mormon ! Am waiting now !

You are such a tease.  Where are the caterpillar photos????

I will send those in morning if they showed up munching leaves !

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Subject: Butterfly
Location: San Marcos, CA
September 27, 2012 1:28 am
These seem to come around every spring and I always enjoy them especially when they visit my Bouganvilla or, in this case, my Pride of Madeira. I’m assuming some kind of swallowtail?
Signature: redfive

Western Tiger Swallowtail

Dear redfive,
This is a Western Tiger Swallowtail.  We spent several days this summer trying to photograph the Western Tiger Swallowtails that flit about our garden but never seem to land.  Then we put out a call for images of Western Tiger Swallowtails and then we made Tiger Swallowtails the Bug of the Month for September, so you letter and identification request are quite timely.

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Subject:  Giant Swallowtail Ovipositing?
Location: Hawthorne, California
September 23, 2012 2:37 pm
Hello,
While the first photo is not focused very well, I included it anyway to show it is a giant swallowtail. Do the next two show it ovipositing on the cigar plant bush? There is a lime tree very near by.
Signature: Thanks, Anna Carreon

Giant Swallowtail

Hi Anna,
Before we could provide you with an accurate answer, we needed to look up the plant family for the cigar plant.  According to Floridata, the cigar plant is in the Loosestrife Family Lythraceae.  Prior to the introduction of citrus in North America, the native Giant Swallowtails used “Common Pricklyash (Zanthoxylum americanum), and Common Hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata)” as larval foods, according to BugGuide.  We do not believe the Giant Swallowtail in your photo is ovipositing on the cigar plant, but we may be wrong.

Giant Swallowtail

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Subject: Common Buckeye and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
Location: Mercer county NJ
September 22, 2012 6:23 pm
I’d like to thank the people at What’s That Bug for helping me identify the various critters I’ve come across in the past couple of years. I do a lot of hiking and fishing so every once in a while I come across something I’ve never seen. This year I started trying to identify the butterflies I’ve seen and gotten pictures of. Here are 2 of my favorites a Common Buckeye and an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail(it is still Tiger Swallowtail month after all)
Signature: David from NJ

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Dear David from NJ,
Thanks for letting us know that our website has been a good resource for your own insect identification.  We are positively thrilled to post your images of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a Common Buckeye.

Common Buckeye

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Subject: Western Tiger Swallowtail…I think
Location: Kent City, MI
September 17, 2012 10:20 pm
You can add this to the picts you were asking for…
Pretty sure she is a Western Tiger Swallowtail.
August 2012
Signature: Edelynn

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Hi Edelynn,
Thank you for submitting your lovely photos of a Tiger Swallowtail.  North America has at least five identified species of Tiger Swallowtails, but two can definitely be eliminated, including the Western Tiger Swallowtail, which according to BugGuide, ranges in:  “Western North America east to the edge of the Rocky Mountains.”  Michigan is an area where the ranges of two species, the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail and the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, overlap, and the two species are closely related enough to interbreed, creating hybrids.  Since there is no blue on the hind wings, we believe this is a male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, and you can read more about it on BugGuide.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

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Subject: Tiger Swallowtails
Location: Western Kentucky
September 9, 2012 6:47 pm
Dear Staff,
I have a question about the Tiger Swallowtails. I know there is an Eastern, a Western, light phase, dark phase and so on. I live in Kentucky and around the area I have seen different colors on the Tiger Swallowtails. I wondered why some have a lot of blue and some have none at all. I am including three shots of the Tiger Swallowtails from around the area. Two are from 2010, and one from 2011. I have wondered about the reason for the areas of blue on some.
Signature: Janet Fox

Male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Hi Janet,
This is a very interesting and complicated question and we will try to the best of our ability to answer it correctly.  There are at least five recognized Tiger Swallowtail species:  Pale Tiger Swallowtail, Western Tiger Swallowtail, Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail as well as a similarly marked western species known as the Two Tailed Swallowtail.  We believe your individuals are Eastern Tiger Swallowtails.  Males lack the dusting of blue scales on the lower wings that are present in the female, so the blue markings can be used to differentiate the sexes.  You can get a full explanation of these differences on BugGuide.  To further complicate things, BugGuide reports hybrids that might occur where the ranges of the different species overlap.

Female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Daniel,
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer me.  I have been taking pictures of bugs for a few years now.  I had so many that I could not name and I spent a lot of time trying to find them on your site.  I broke down and bought a Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.  I still have a couple I can not find in there.  But I am happy to report most of my photos do have names.  Your site is a great resource to me for information and confirming my possibles.  When I started taking random pictures of bugs, I never realized there were so many kinds.  I also didn’t know so many were so pretty.
Thanks again.
Janet

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