Green dragontail

Appearance

A small butterfly, the green dragontail has a wingspan of 40 to 55 millimetres . It is basically black and white in colour scheme, it has a very large white-tipped tail, 25 to 40 millimetres 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''.

Naming

*''L. m. meges'' Sumatra, Java, Borneo
⤷ ''L. m. ennius'' northern Sulawesi, central Sulawesi
⤷ ''L. m. akirai'' Tsukada & Nishiyama, 1980 southern Sulawesi
⤷ ''L. m. virescens'' Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, Peninsular Malaya, Haina
⤷ ''L. m. annamiticus'' southeastern Thailand, southern Vietnam
⤷ ''L. m. pallidus'' northern Vietnam
⤷ ''L. m. niasicus'' Nias
⤷ ''L. m. decius'' Philippines
⤷ ''L. m. pessimus'' Fruhstorfer, 1909 Philippines
⤷ ''L. m. amplifascia'' Tytler, 1939 Yunnan, Burma

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.

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 ''Lamproptera'' genus were seen during the 2003 and 2004 survey, the species-wise breakdown not being published.

Behavior

The eggs are pale green, spherical, smooth, almost transparent and resemble the eggs of other swallowtails. The caterpillar is dark green in colour and is spotted with black. The chrysalis is attached to the upper surface of a leaf by the cremaster.

Food

''Illigera burmanica'' King . In the Philippines, the butterfly has also been recorded from ''Zanthoxylum'' species .