(Specimen: courtesy of the The Australian Museum)

The pupa is orange with black knobs on, and has a length of about 2.5 cms.

Male
(Specimen: courtesy of the The Australian Museum)

The upper surfaces of the wings of the adult male butterfly are yellow to orange, with a black forewing tips, and a narrow black band around the hindwing edges.

Female
(Specimen: courtesy of the The Australian Museum)

The upper surfaces of the wings of the adult female butterfly are black, with an orange basal area, and some obscure orange spots around the forewing tips.

Underside, Male
(Specimen: courtesy of the The Australian Museum)

The undersides of both sexes are dark brown. The male has a yellow mark on each forewing and a scarlet mark near the base of each hindwing. The female has arcs of yellow spots around the margin of the undersides of all four wings. Both sexes have wingspans of about 7 cms.

Papua New Guinea 1966

Various subspecies are found on

In Australia, only the sub species inferna Butler, 1871, is found, in

Further reading :

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Dechauffour de Boisduval,
Faune Entomologique de L'Ocean Pacifique,
Voyage de Decouvertes de la Corvette l'Astrolabe,
Division 7, Part 1 : Lepidopteres (1832), p. 48, No. 4.

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 1, pp. 333-334.

Arthur G. Butler,
Lepidoptera Exotica,
Descriptions and Illustrations of Exotic Lepidoptera,
London : E.W. Janson, Volume 1, Part 8 (1871), p. 63, No. 4, and also Plate 24 fig. 6.

G.A. Wood,
The life history of Delias aruna inferna Butler (Lepidoptera: Pieridae: Pierinae),
Queensland Naturalist,
Volume 35 (1997), pp. 1-3.

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(updated 1 January 2012, 29 December 2023)