| Australian Leafwing NYMPHALINAE, NYMPHALIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of Rose Robin, Tamborine Mountain, Queensland)
|
| Australian Leafwing NYMPHALINAE, NYMPHALIDAE, PAPILIONOIDEA | (donherbisonevans@yahoo.com) and Stella Crossley |
(Photo: courtesy of Rose Robin, Tamborine Mountain, Queensland)
This Caterpillar is black with cream spots and blue and red markings. It is covered sparsely in branched black spines, and has a pair of hairy horns on its head. The caterpillar feeds nocturnally, hiding by day in debris on the ground by its foodplant.
The caterpillars feed on the foliage of various species from the family ACANTHACEAE, including the Australian native plants :
as well as the introduced species :
The pupa is smooth and brown, with a curvy black line along each side, and a few yellow spots . It hangs by a silk cremaster from the foodplant.
The adult butterflies have wings shaped so that the resting butterfly (with the wings closed over its back) looks like a leaf. There is a small tail to the hind wings. The upper surfaces of the wings are orange with a broad dark area around the wingtips.
The undersides purplish-brown with a vein-like mark running across both the fore and hind wings.
The eggs are pale yellow and spherical, and are laid in small clusters on young growth of a foodplant.
The species is found across south-east Asia including :
and the subspecies australis C. & R. Felder, [1867], occurs in:
Further reading :
Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 563-564.
Pieter Cramer,
Description de Papillons Exotiques,
Uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen,
Amsterdam Baalde, Volume 2 (1777), p. 9, figs. C, D, and
Plate 102, figs. C, D.
Frank Jordan & Helen Schwencke,
Create More Butterflies : a guide to 48 butterflies and their host-plants
Earthling Enterprises, Brisbane, 2005, pp. 27, 61, 64.
Ross Kendall,
Images of Butterfly Larvae,
Butterflies and Other Invertebrates Club,
Metamorphosis Australia,
Issue 55 (December 2009), p. 32.
 caterpillar |  butterflies |  Lepidoptera |  moths |  caterpillar |
(updated 21 February 2011, 9 August 2024)