Lime Butterfly

Lime Butterfly

Common name          - Lime Butterfly

Scientific name          - Papilio demoleus demoleusss

Sinhala name             - Dehirisiya

Family                                    - Papilionedae

                                     (In Sri Lanka, there are 15 species belong to this family)

The Lime Butterfly occurs in both the Low-Country Wet and Dry Zones. They are becoming more common during the annual migrating season of the butterflies, from about October to March.

The butterflies of this family are popularly called “Swallowtails” owing to the fact that most of them are seen to sport fairly long appendages (a thing that has attached) on their hind wings in flight.

This butterfly has a wingspan of 80-90mm.The Lime Butterfly is normally identified by its rich yellow speckling on the wings and body.

Life Cycle

Eggs

The Lime Butterfly lays its eggs mainly on the lime tree, that’s the reason this so called butterfly gets its name. And also this butterfly lays its eggs in Orange, Bael, Manderine, Pomelo and various other plants of the Rutacea Family. It favours laying eggs under tender leaves.

The egg is pale yellow in colour,but turns rather brownish towards hatching.

Larva

The newly hatched larva is 2.5mm long and as with all others  in the  family resembles a bird’s dropping, being black with a whitish V- shaped mark in the middle of the body.

Soon after the hatching the larva consumes the empty egg shell as its first meal. Passing several stages of moulting(in the process of renewing), the larva reaches maturity by about the 17^th day after hatching from egg. The full grown larva is 34mm long and7mm broad.

As a whole it is yellowish green, with discs in the front and rear, each equipped with a pair of brown  horns, whose tips are yellow. Burnt sienna coloured patches on either side of body, starting from the white marginal band below and slanting upward are conspicuous. There is another shorter, similar coloured patch at the base of the 10^th segment. These patches are thinly speckled with yellow and brown. Three spots of similar colours are on the dorsum of segments 8, 9 and 10^th. Above the spots are two sharp fleshy black processes, tipped white. The legs and pro-legs are brown, the latter covered with soft hairy growth.

Pupa (the insect in the stage between larva and imago)

At the end of the larval period of between 15 to 17 days, the larva stops feeding and prepares itself for pupation on the underside of a leaf stalk.

The pupa is generally inactive and well camouflaged. It is 30*9mm in size. Rounded and overall green in color, paler towards the tail-end and yellowish on the back. There are several rows of short tubercular processes on the back and on the underside there are more processes over the front wing-bud. The pupa is bent backward and dorsally broad and stocky. The head is swollen, the frontal projection almost absent and its margin slightly curved. The thorax is high but less pointed.

Imago(the adult butterfly)

The imago come out from the pupal case within 9 to 11 days time and hangs downwards a while, until the blood containing oxygen passes to the wings through vein system. This process takes from 30 to 45 minutes, before the wings expand and dry up enabling the insect to fly away.