Female on the bottom.

Once again : wonderful !

A lifer !

Hello again,

I just took this ab. P. canadensis off the spreading board today. Following are photos of the dorsal & ventral wing surfaces & a comparison to a "normal" fm. Canadian Tiger Swallowtail collected on the same date (30 May 2025) & location.


John K.

20 June 2025: The last "Spring Form" observed was found fresh and crushed by a car tire in a popular hamburger joint parking lot. Amazing that the Tigers can be so focused on puddling that they can be run over.

Now on to the MST (P. solstitius) season...

May and June in the Finger Lakes region of NY have been horrible. Storms, tornados, flooding, deaths. Over the past month, four freak days hit 90F (32C) which were terminated by thunderstorms. Four days were typical nice summer days. The rest were rainy, cold, and windy. What a garbage summer so far.

02 July 2025: 74F/ 23C, winds NW 8, 100% sun
Observed: zero

It's now the very beginning of MST (solstitius) season, typically. Being the first decent day, I checked the shoreline and side roads of Wayne Co. NY near Lake Ontario. Zero. iNat has observations in the Ithaca NY area, but not here. The preferred nectaring source, milkweed, is a good week from full bloom. I wonder...does the full bloom of milkweed with the emergence of MST coincide due to the same factors? Or does MST somehow "know", in real-time as if checking Weather Channel, it is too early to emerge and nectar, despite the calendar date?

Some collectors are being scammed by purchasing female Papilio antimachus (rare in collections) that are actually altered males.
Here are some recent live photos by Sui Fai Pun that clearly show the differences between males and females:

Female : Male : Pictures taken in June 2025 in Uganda.

Main differences :
- females have rounded forewings
- females lacks the three white spots on the underside.

Be careful, some fraudulent sellers “cut” the forewings of males to round them like those of females. The absence of white spots is therefore a better indicator. So always check the underside !
Here is an example of a fake female with cut wings : https://archive.insectnet.com/thread/63 ... hus-female

I hope it will help.

Hii
I thought more of a hobby entomologist. I will be there at the end of July for 15 days in camp like 60km west from Cayenne

Oh well done, thank you!

It's a species of Heterotoma, probably Heterotoma planicornis (Flathorn Plant Bug) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotoma_planicornis

https://www.naturespot.org/species/hete ... lanicornis

Hello everyone

I've never seen anything like this before and can't identify it.

I was sitting outside here in Suffolk England, having a drink and it was there underneath my glass when I picked it up.

It has six green legs plus two 'claw like' structures that it was waving around, they had a fat part then short thin jointed extensions. No actual pincers. It appears to have a wing case. It was about 12mm long.

Thank you

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Zy9b9Ffr9ExxMxYe9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7sHe7BzB6J88qsMt7

adamcotton wrote: Mon Jun 30, 2025 9:50 am No it isn't. This is Papilio daedalus from the Philippines, a closely related but separate species...

Thank you for pointing this out. This likely means that many of the specimens that I've seen labeled as palinurus, including ones in my own collection, are actually probably daedalus.

Hello,

Welcome here.
The few French Guianan entomologists that I know are working on Amazonian species only. They already have so much work studying their own fauna. I doubt they will be interested in entomo pins or European insects.
When and where do you go inside French Guiana ?

I will be there in November (Kaw, Saul and Belizon on the program).

livingplanet3 wrote: Mon Jun 30, 2025 4:17 am Correct - this is Papilio palinurus

No it isn't. This is Papilio daedalus from the Philippines, a closely related but separate species. Note on the hindwing that the green band points directly at the 'eye spot' at the anal angle of the hindwing (inner edge below the tip of the abdomen), whereas in Papilio palinurus the green band ends above the 'eye spot'. It seems that Wikipedia doesn't know that there are two separate species in their 'Papilio palinurus'.

This species is not protected and perfectly legal to own in the USA. Also it is worth mentioning that Papilio daedalus from the Philippines is the species often exhibited in butterfly houses. This species is bred in large numbers, whereas the true Papilio palinurus is not.

Adam.

Correct - this is Papilio palinurus, commonly known as the emerald swallowtail. Yes, it's completely legal to own specimens of this species in the US, and it's very common in collections, as well as butterfly houses. It's reared commercially in captivity in large numbers, and ranges over quite a wide area of Southeast Asia.

Further info -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilio_palinurus

Hi,
I would like to ask for help with a specimen shown below. I was gifted it as a kid in the mid to late 2000s. It's about 4 or 5 inches (10 to 13 cm) across and did not come with any location/species info. Sorry about the hideous mounting; I didn't know any better and was just trying to keep it from being damaged by sliding around in the case.

Someone elsewhere on the internet suggested it may be Papilio palinurus. Is this ID correct? Also, can anyone advise (informally—not official legal advice I know) on whether I can own this legally in the US? I have done my homework before posting and it looks like P. palinurus is not CITES listed but is protected in Thailand and I of course have no idea where this particular specimen is from or whether there are other laws I need to be considering.

Thank you for reading!

n73

Something unusual happened with the Smerinthus opthalmica larva I was raising, the larva, all sleeved, as they began to mature, every day I'd go and pour out the changed larva.

The first 21 larva were put into 2 different containers , they burrowed in as soon as they hit the substrate, which in itself is not something I have ever noticed, at least with other burrowing species.

Now- the weirdest part of all, is that after 5 days in the substrate, at room temperature, which is 72 at my house, all were fully formed pupa, and I
removed them from the substrate, the remaining larva are taking the time I normally associate with the time it takes for larva to form pupa, more
like 10 days. I've never experienced larva doing this.

Ok, I can see one logical possiblity, and that was that the larve were mature long enough in the sleeve wandering, that some of the time was used up.
Does that make any sense? But that wouldn't explain the remaining lethargic larva, or the reality that I looked for mature larva everyday.

Hii. Is there any entomologist from French guiana? I will travel there from europe and have insect export permit. Would you be interested in exchange ? I can bring some entomological pins or some insect of Czech republic.

Hello again,

Thank you very much to everyone for your positive compliments on the recent LUCKY collection of this rare aberration. I wish that same luck would help in winning a lottery!..

By the way... in my area, the summer of 2024, was also a very hot, dry season with drought-like conditions interspersed with brief cooler temps & heavy sporadic rain showers. Remember, last year, all the smoke from massive forest fires in W. Canada drifting far S. into the USA, causing breathing problems for millions! When the larva of this aberrant would have pupated in July-August '24, temps, for many days, reached well above 30 C = 86 F, with a number of days exceeding 34 C = 94 F... certainly favorable environmental conditions that may have contributed to the '25 production of this interesting aberration (as outlined by Adam Cotton above).

John K.

Super! The explanation of the process is interesting, I know it's come up before, so apparently these type of abberations would be more common in areas with more dramatic weather changes than more even climates.

Your canadensis is out of this world !!!
And what are the odds that such unique specimen has had developed a „blister” ?!

Congrats

Thank you very much Adam Cotton for your expertise in explaining the probable cause of this aberration & the "hole" in the forewing. Your knowledge of the Swallowtails is incredible.

John K.