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

The female adult butterfly of this species has forewings each with a black upper surface, but with a large blue and white area extending from the base. The hindwings are black each with a pale blue and white area around the wingtip, and along the hind margin..

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

The male butterfly has mauve forewings, each with a white patch in the middle. The hindwings are mauve, each with white stripes along the costa and hind margin. Both sexes are white underneath.

The species is found in:

Philiris diana was previously thought to have two subspecies occurring in Australia. Those two subspecies are now recognised to be two separate species: Philiris diana and Philiris papuana.

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 679-680.

Donald Peter Andrew Sands,
Review of Australian Philiris Röber (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), with notes on variation and descriptions of two new subspecies from Cape York peninsula,
Australian Entomologist,
Volume 42, Part 4 (2015), pp. 219-252.

Gustavus Athol Waterhouse & George Lyell,
The Butterflies of Australia,
Angus & Robertson, 1914, Sydney, p. 76, No. 87, and also Fig. 183, as well as Figs. 270, 271.

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(updated 22 June 2008, 22 November 2013, 7 August 2020, 8 September 2021)