Micronia aculeata

That night coming home for dinner I spotted this moth on our kitchen floor. Being a pretty common moth around my house I assumed that I will get lot of information about this white moth. It was sitting on the vitrified floor tile which I have used in my kitchen. Dark clay color of the tile was a great contrast to the white, grey moth. Unfortunately the profile picture of the moth was impossible to get as it was sitting as though it was firmly stuck to the tile. That is why you see the picture from one angle here. I used Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 100mm F2.8L USM Macro lens illuminated with Canon Speedlite 580EXII fitted with ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter.

Micronia aculeata

When I searched internet for the information about this moth, I drew blank. Even thoughit is so common we hardly know anything about it. This Micronia aculeata moth belongs to Uraniidae family of moths. Unfortunately I could not find any common name for this moth. Some have called it Wayanad greystripe moth. It is found throughout India, China, Taiwan, SriLanka, Burma; Andaman, Java and Borneo. The adult moths of this species have speckled pale brown wings with two faint darker submarginal bands. Each forewing has a hooked apex, and at the tornus of each hindwing there is a short tail with a black spot.

Micronia aculeata

Like many moths in the family Uraniidae, the moth has its wings open and flat in its resting posture. It is also a day flying moth. Thanks to Haneesh K.M we have Life cycle of Micronia aculeata on Flickr. Host plant for its caterpillar is Green Milkweed Climber Wattakaka volubilis.

Tailed Palmfly

Around 1:30 AM after a really late night call at my hospital I was returning back home for a well deserved sleep, I saw this butterfly sitting on a dry vine near corridor of my house. I could make out that it was a butterfly from the way it was sitting with wings folded. Dim light of corridor did not help me to identify it. Once I saw the butterfly all my tiredness vanished and I wanted to photograph it. I slowly tiptoed into the house to grab and assemble all my macro rig without waking my family.

Tailed Palmfly Closeup

Once I got my Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM fitted with ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter on a Canon Speedlite 580EX II, I headed back to the butterfly. I use a led headlight to illuminate the butterfly so that I can focus in such a dark night. For macro photography I prefer manual focus over auto. Using the led headlight I can fine tune focus setting. For macro focusing I use a simple trick. I rotate the focus ring of the lens to a nearest focus position and then move my whole camera towards the subject till it is in perfect focus. If I overshoot, I back off till I get subject in full focus and then squeeze the shutter release. This allows my left hand to be free. I use my left hand to stabilize the branch where the subject is sitting so that I get a steady shot in case of a breeze. That night there was no breeze and the butterfly was sitting without moving hoping that it gets unnoticed in that darkness.

Tailed Palmfly

It was a Tailed Palmfly(Elymnias caudata). In the past this butterfly was considered as caudata subspecies of Common Palmfly (Elymnias hypermnestra caudata). Now Common Palmfly (Elymnias hypermnestra) and Tailed Palmfly(Elymnias caudata) are considered separate species. It is the most common and widely distributed Palmfly and the only one found in South India. Common in jungles and palm plantations. Avoids bright sunlight and rarely comes out into the open. Occurs in the plains and up to 1700 m in the hills. Active through out the year in South India. With weak flight,settles for a long time on leaves or trunks of palm trees at some height from the ground.

Tailed Palmfly

It lays its eggs on palm trees belonging to Arecaceae family like Coconut (Cocos nucifera), Areca Nut (Areca catechu), Rattan Palm (Calamus rotang), Loureiro’s Date Palm (Phoenix lourerii) Oilpalm (Elaeis guineensis), Yellow or Golden Cane Palm (Dypsis lutescens) and Chinese fan palm(Livistona chinensis).

This butterfly species is dimorphic, males and females do not look alike. Males exhibit black colored upperside forewings with small blue patches and reddish brown color on upperside hindwings, while the females mimic butterfly species of the genus Danaus. Sine I could not visualize the upperside of this specimen I am not sure whether it is male or female.

Mating Common Mormons

Monsoon rain was lashing heavily that day. That morning when there was a brief respite from the rain, I went home to grab a quick cup of coffee, I saw these Common Mormon (Papilio polytes) mating on the citrus plant. Leaving the coffee aside I grabbed my camera and rushed to get these photos. The place where these butterflies were mating was a tricky one. It was on a precarious ledge so I had very little space to maneuver myself. They were hanging from a bush which had only one clear opening, rest of the surrounding was covered by leaves. Light was pretty abysmal. As I had sold my 5D Mark II that time I had only one camera. I fitted my Canon EOS 1D Mark IV with Canon EF 100 f/2.8L IS USM. For the light I used ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter on Canon Speedlite 580EX II flash.

The female Common Mormon was hanging from the citrus leaf and male was attached to the female. Weight of the both these butterflies was carried by female. Even though I was not expecting them to fly off in that position I did not want to disturb their coitus. Using the only window of opening I had, I tried to take photograph before the rain resumed.

Mating Common Mormons

At the first sight both butterflies look so dissimilar. That is because the female Common Mormon is mimicking the Crimson Rose (Atrophaneura hector) butterfly. Common Mormons are not toxic but by mimicking the toxic butterfly they escape being eaten by birds which mistake them for Crimson Rose.

Henry Walter Bates, determined that these multi-morph females are mimicking other butterflies. In the areas where the Mormons occur, there are other species of butterflies that look like one or another morph of the Mormon females. These other species feed on toxic plants such as Aristolocia, which renders them unpalatable to predators. The Mormon females, which are palatable, mimic the unpalatable model thus gaining protection from predators that mistake them for the other bad tasting species. This type of mimicry has become known as Batesian mimicry in honor of Bates who first described it in 1862.

Male Common Mormon

The male has one morph only. It is a dark-coloured swallow-tailed butterfly. The upper forewing has a series of white spots decreasing in size towards the apex. The upper hindwing has a complete discal band of elongated white spots. It may or may not have marginal red crescents. The males are smaller in size than the females.

The female of the Common Mormon is polymorphic. In South Asia, it has three forms or morphs. These are as follows:

• Form romulus: This female form mimics the Crimson Rose and is common over its range. It is not such a close mimic as the previous form being duller than its model, the Crimson Rose. It is easy to differentiate the mimics from models by the color of their body—the models are red-bodied and the mimics are black-bodied. This is the form you are seeing in these photographs.
• Form cyrus: This form is similar to the male, differing in that it always has strongly marked red crescents. It is the least common of the three forms. It is normally abundant where the Common Rose or Crimson Rose do not occur, such as in Himachal Pradesh around Shimla.
• Form stichius: This female form of the Common Mormon mimics the Common Rose very closely. This is the commonest form wherever the Common Rose flies.

Closeup of female Common Mormon

Common Mormon butterfly is considered as the classic example of Batesian Mimicry in which edible species resemble unpalatable butterflies in order to escape being eaten by predators. The populations of the mimicking morphs of the Common Mormon are much smaller than that of their models – the Common or Crimson Rose. This is in order to allow first time predators a much greater chance of preying upon the unpalatable model in the first instance and thus learning of their in-edibility.

Larger populations of mimics could result in the edible Common Mormon mimics being sampled the first time by predators. If this should happen, the predator may not realize that butterflies of that color and pattern are protected by the poisons they ingest; thus dramatically reducing the effectiveness of this scheme of protection.

Mating Common Mormons

If you are wondering how these butterflies got their name, here is an interesting fact. Harish Gaonkar, of the Natural History Museum in London, recently wrote

the origins of giving common English names to organisms, particularly butterflies for tropical species started in India around the mid 19th century.The naming of Mormons evolved slowly. I think the first to get such a name was the Common Mormon (Papilio polytes), because it had three different females, a fact that could only have been observed in the field, and this they did in India. The name obviously reflected the Mormon sect in America, which as we know, practiced polygamy.