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.

Female Common Mormon - 100mm macro

After I got my Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM lens, I wanted to use it as single lens for both birding as well as macro. I have used Canon EF 300mm f/4.0L IS USM successfully in the past and got pretty good result. It was a great macro lens but the reach for bird photography was not there as its performance 1.4x teleconverter was average. 2.0x convertor was bad. f/2.8 lens was great with both these convertors and remained as sharp as original. This prompted me to try it as single all in one lens.

As a test I tried shooting female Common Mormon Butterfly (Papilio polytes)sitting on rose leaves during rain. You can check the details about the butterfly in article Male Common Mormon Butterfly.

The photo on the top shows my presently favored approach. It is shot using Canon EOS 5D Mark II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS II USM using ExpoImaging Ray Flash Adapter on Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash. The exposure using flash ring adapter gave a nice even light and ISO 200 with aperture of F/14 produced nice deep (in macro terms) depth of field. I was working nearly a feet away from the butterfly. Some insects get intimidated by such proximity of humans and it is difficult to capture them. If you notice the flash also made the background dark as the ambient light was very low. This can help to isolate your subject from cluttered background. But it also produces an unnatural look to the photo. Some shy critters will not allow you to approach this close.

Female Common Mormon - 300mm f/2.8

Here in my second photo I used Canon EOS 7D with Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens on Canon EF 1.4x II Extender. The light was pretty low as it was raining heavily. So I used ISO 3200 to get hand holdable speed of 1/180th of second exposure at f/4 aperture. This setup gave me a sufficient working distance of around 3 meters from butterfly. I was standing under shade of roof and shooting this butterfly which was protecting my gear from rain. The safe distance allows you to get those shy type of critters easily.

There is price to pay for this comfort (I am not talking about the price of the lens here ) The lens is heavy, depth of field is very shallow. As you can see at f/4 aperture which was possible under the existing light butterflies antennae are out of focus even though the eyes are. Since the camera is far off I can’t use the flash and ring adapter to light up also. I can now use the naked Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash to throw as much light at the subject. Light reaching subject will be low. I can use either Better Beamer flash extender to concentrate the light on the butterfly or I can keep the flash off camera close to the subject. In the field this is difficult to achieve with fast moving subjects.

As you can see there is no easy shortcut to take for macro photography. Dedicated macro lens has advantages and several plus points. Using such an lens can achieve a great magnification and closeup shot of the subject. In the future blogs let us see how we can use extension tubes to alter minimum focusing distance and thus increasing magnification.

Male Common Mormon Butterfly

Here is a male Common Mormon (Papilio polytes) butterfly which was resting at night on Royal Poinciana (Delonix regia) leaf. I was not able to focus the butterfly at all as it was very dark. I used a 8 LED torch held in my left hand to focus and shoot with Canon EOS 5D mark II using Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro with Canon MT-24EX macro twin light flash from right hand. As the butterfly was perched high on the tree this was a great acrobatic task.

The Common Mormon Papilio polytes is a common species of swallowtail butterfly widely distributed across Asia. This butterfly is known for the mimicry displayed by the numerous forms of its females which mimic inedible Red-bodied Swallowtails, such as the Common Rose and the Crimson Rose. The male are monomorphic dark-coloured swallow-tailed butterfly. The upper fore wing has a series of white spots decreasing in size towards the apex. The upper hind wing 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.
Female form romulus 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; although a few specimens of form romulus have also been caught alongside.

Form stichius of the Common Mormon mimics the Common Rose very closely. This is the commonest form wherever the Common Rose flies.

Form romulus 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 colour of their body – the models are red-bodied and the mimics are black-bodied.

Common Mormon in Sepia

Here is the same mormon shot converted to Sepia tone in Adobe lightroom.