Badamia exclamationis

Badamia exclamationis (Fabricius, 1775)
Narrow-winged Awl
(one synonym : Papilio ladon Cramer, 1780)
COELIADINAE, HESPERIIDAE, HESPERIOIDEA

Don Herbison-Evans
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Badamia exclamationis
(Photo: courtesy of Mark Korner, Cairns, Queensland)

This Caterpillar is smooth and yellow, with various black markings, including a dorsal line, and a transverse band between each pair of segments. The head is yellow with two transverse black stripes. It lives on its food plant in a shelter made from a leaf, folded over and held with silk. It feeds on:

False Almond ( Terminalia catappa, COMBRETACEAE ),

Yellow Wood ( Terminalia oblongata, COMBRETACEAE ),

Australian Damson ( Terminalia seriocarpa, COMBRETACEAE ), as well as

Pongam ( Pongamia pinnata, FABACEAE ) and

Timor Liana ( Rhyssopterys timorensis, MALPIGHIACEAE ),

living in a partly folded leaf, open ended like a cup. The caterpillar grows to a length of about 5 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of Mark Korner, Cairns, Queensland)

The caterpillar pupates in a partly folded leaf, often away from the food plant, secured by threads of silk. The pupa is a patchy brown and white, with a length of about 2 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of CSIRO/BIO Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

The male adult butterfly is dark brown with a series of white spots on each forewing. The females have only vestigial white spots.

drawing by Pieter Cramer, listed as Papilio ladon,
Papilions exotiques des trois parties du monde l'Asie, l'Afrique et l'Amérique,
Volume 3 (1782), Plate CCLXXXIV, fig. G,
image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

The undersides are similar to the upper surfaces. The hindwings of both sexes are unusual, in having a recurve along the margin near the tornus. The wing span is about 5 cms.

(Photo: courtesy of Martin Purvis, Sydney)

The eggs are cream coloured and hemispherical. They are laid singly on young shoots of a food plant.

The species is found across south-east Asia and the west Pacific, including

as well as in Australia in:

Victoria, and

Samoa, 1986

The species is famous for its extensive migrations, southward some years, and northward in others. This butterfly species is also unique in having nocturnal migrations.