Papilio bianor dehaanii
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2023 1:38 pm
Pair of summer form & female of spring form with data. I don't have a male of the spring form.
Lovely specimens, but Papilio dehaanii is a separate species to P. bianor. Your specimens from Honshu, Japan are ssp. dehaanii. True P. bianor only occurs in Yaeyama Islands (Ishigaki etc) in southernmost Japan. There is a third species, P. ryukyuensis on Okinawa (ssp. ryukyuensis) and Amami (ssp. amamiensis), whereas the population on Tokara Island (ssp. tokaraensis) belongs to P. dehaanii.
This has been confirmed in a very important paper on genus Papilio (s.l.) that has just been published in pre-proof form. We are not very happy that the publishing company is selling copies of the pre-proof version, which will be different in some small ways to the final official version. This policy will result in more than one version in circulation. Luckily in this case there will not be any scientific differences between the versions. Once the final online version is published I will tell everyone here about it and the many changes to Papilio taxonomy resulting from this paper. In the case of the three species above we only confirmed previous findings, nothing really new.
Adam.