Lamproptera meges
Lamproptera meges, the green dragontail, is a species of swallowtail butterfly found in parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia. There are ten subspecies. A specimen from Java is the type species of the genus Lamproptera.
Description
A small butterfly, the green dragontail has a wingspan of. It is basically black and white in colour scheme, it has a very large white-tipped tail, long. The forewing has a triangular hyaline patch with black borders, and thin black stripes along the veins, forming six to eight spot/bands. It also has a pale band running obliquely across the pre-discal area. This band is continued onto the black hindwing which bears the long tail and prominent abdominal wing fold. In this species, the pale bands are light green while in its closely related species, Lamproptera curius, they are white. Also in L. curius, the white band has a hyaline outer edge. Sexes are alike, but the female is duller and has a ventral copulation groove before the tip of the abdomen. The males of this species do not have the sex mark found in L. curius.Distribution
The butterfly is found in northeastern India, in the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland. It is also found in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, Cambodia, peninsular and eastern Malaysia, the Indonesian archipelago, Brunei, and the Philippines. In Indonesia, it is found on the islands of Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Nias, Bangka and Java. In 2006, it was reported from Zhangjiajie of Hunan Province.Subspecies
- Lamproptera meges meges Sumatra, Java, Borneo
- Lamproptera meges ennius northern Sulawesi, central Sulawesi
- Lamproptera meges akirai Tsukada & Nishiyama, 1980 southern Sulawesi
- Lamproptera meges virescens Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Hainan
- Lamproptera meges annamiticus eastern Thailand, southern Vietnam
- Lamproptera meges pallidus northern Vietnam
- Lamproptera meges niasicus Nias
- Lamproptera meges decius Philippines
- Lamproptera meges pessimus Fruhstorfer, 1909 Philippines
- Lamproptera meges amplifascia Tytler, 1939 Yunnan, Burma
Status
The green dragontail is not known to be threatened in most of its range but is considered vulnerable and in need of protection in peninsular Malaysia.In a study of swallowtail assemblages in Rani-Garbhanga Reserve Forest in Assam in 2003 and 2004, dragontails were found to have one of the lowest mean abundances; both L. meges and L. curius being found in gaps as well as in closed forest. A 2004 report had earlier suggested that the status of the green dragontail in Garbhanga Reserve Forest was "very rare"; later a total of 108 butterflies of genus Lamproptera were seen during the 2003 and 2004 survey, the species-wise breakdown not being published.