Dryadula phaetusa


Dryadula is a monotypic genus of the butterfly family Nymphalidae. Its single species, Dryadula phaetusa, known as the banded orange heliconian, banded orange, or orange tiger, is native from Brazil to central Mexico, and in summer can be found rarely as far north as central Florida. Its wingspan ranges from 86 to 89 mm, and it is colored a bright orange with thick black stripes in males and a duller orange with fuzzier black stripes in females.

Banded orange heliconian
male, dorsal view
Panama
female, ventral view
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Arthropoda
Class:
Insecta
Order:
Lepidoptera
Family:
Nymphalidae
Tribe:
Heliconiini
Genus:
Dryadula

Michner, 1942
Species:
D. phaetusa
Binomial name
Dryadula phaetusa

It feeds primarily on the nectar of flowers and on bird droppings; its caterpillar feeds on passion vines including Passiflora tetrastylis. It is generally found in lowland tropical fields and valleys.

This species is unpalatable to birds and belongs to the "orange" Batesian mimicry complex.[1]

  • male underside
  • female dorsal side
  • pinned specimen (both sides) - MHNT
  • female underside
  • pinned specimen (female dorsal side)

Symbiosis

Prior to their mating season, males of this species congregate by the hundreds on patches of moist soil that contain mineral salts (mud-puddling). When they cannot find such deposits, the insects visit various animals to drink salty secretions from their skin and nostrils.[2]

Taxonomy

The genus Dryadula Michner, 1942, is monotypic; the type species is Papilio phaetusa Linnaeus, 1758 (Syst. Nat. 10 ed., 1: 478). The type locality, given as "Indiis", is supposed to refer to the West Indies or northern South America.

gollark: (and nginx)
gollark: Why would you not just use my solution of giant folders of MKV files™?
gollark: Unless it has terrible exotic crypto, it'll be hardware-accelerated, surely.
gollark: Light mode is perfectly valid on laptop-ish devices with non-OLED monitors.
gollark: Why not just an "open search thing" keybind?

References
  1. Pinheiro, Carlos E.G. (1996) Palatability and escaping ability in Neotropical butterflies: Tests with wild kingbirds (Tyrannus melancholicus, Tyrannidae). Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 59(4):351–365. HTML abstract
  2. Richard Milner. (1999) Natural History 108(7):84–85.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.