| Sapphire Moonbeam LUCIINI, THECLINAE, LYCAENIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)
|
| Sapphire Moonbeam LUCIINI, THECLINAE, LYCAENIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)
These Caterpillars are green with a cream dorsal line, cream mottling generally, and dense hairy sides. The Caterpillars rest by day under a leaf near the base by a vein, where it is well camouflaged.
They feed nocturnally, the foodplant being :
The pupa is usually attached to the underside of a leaf of its foodplant.
The male adult butterflies are black on top, with a large blue-green iridescent patch on each wing.
The females only have the coloured patches on the forewings. Underneath, both sexes are white with black dots around the tornus of each hindwing. They have a wingspan of about 2 cms.
The species occurs as various subspecies in
and as subspecies manskiei Ring & Olive, 1997, in
Further reading :
Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, p. 686.
Graham R. Forbes,
Comparison of the immature stages of
Philiris sappheira manskiei Ring and Olive, and P. nitens nitens
(Grose-Smith) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae),
Butterflies and Other Invertebrates Club,
Metamorphosis Australia,
Issue 58 (September 2010), pp. 9-14.
Donald Peter Andrew Sands,
The identity of Philiris nitens (Grose-Smith) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae),
with description of a new subspecies from Papua New Guinea,
Australian Entomological Magazine,
Volume 6 (1980), pp. 81-86.
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.
 caterpillar |  butterflies |  Lepidoptera |  moths |  caterpillar |
(updated 16 December 2011, 14 August 2024)