Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly

Facts about Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly,
"Wallace’s Golden Birdwing scientific name Ornithoptera croesus". The Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly is a Swallowtail butterfly that belongs to the Troides genus of the Papilionidae family. The Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly are largely found in the North India, Burma, Nepal, Thailand, China, Laos, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia and in peninsular Malaysia. They are generally widespread and are not endangered, although the Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly are categorized as Vulnerable. The Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly prefers to live in damp lowland surroundings such as marshlands.

Features

Wallace’s Golden Birdwing is a big size butterfly that has a maximum wingspan, ranging from 5 3/4 inches to 6 1/4 inches (4.9 to 16.0cm ), whereas the females have a wingspan is about 5 1/2 inches to 6 1/3 inches (14.2 to 16.2cm). The Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly can differ in size according to whether they are the summer generation, spring generation, or the autumn generation. The male Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly will travel a maximum distance of 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) from where they pupate, whereas the female ones will travel a maximum distance of 1 2/3 miles (3 kilometers) from where they pupate.

The male Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterflys have black color fore-wings, with an orange, gold or red leading border, and with white color bordered veins, whereas their back wings are bright yellow in color. The underside of the Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly wings is fairly similar to their upside. Generally, the female Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly are bigger than the male ones and have black or dark-brown color wings. The thorax, head and the abdomen of the Wallace’s Golden butterflies are mostly black in color, with little red color patches on their thorax and a yellow color underside of the abdomen. Their caterpillars have a light brown color body, with numerous lines of dark spines and elongated projections, looking like thorns.



During the hottest months, the Golden Birdwing butterflies fly from the month of September to April. At lower heights, the Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly come out between September and November months and then from January to March when humidity, temperatures and precipitation are high, and the days are extensive. Adult Wallace’s Golden butterflies are more copious from September to November and again from February to April, even though this differs somewhat between different areas. Though the Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly have two breeding periods at lower heights, there is only a single breeding at higher altitudes.

Diet

The adult Golden Birdwing butterfly feeds mostly on Mussaenda, a flowering plant with yellow-colored flowers. The caterpillars mostly feed on Thottea and Aristolochia flowering plants of the Aristolochiaceae family.

Breeding

The vine includes pheromones that the butterfly can sense from some Miles (kilometers) away. The female Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly will arrive and lay her eggs only on the chosen leaves that are at the correct period for her caterpillars to eat when they hatch. She achieves this by means of receptors in her front legs. The female Wallace-s Golden Birdwing Butterfly is capable of laying 60 to 100 eggs at a time, and she lays her eggs on the leaves of the plant, which belongs to the Pararistolochia variety. When the caterpillar emerges after 10 to 13 days, it will continue eating its individual egg shell first, and then, it will eat the leaves of the plant until it has sufficiently developed to the pupa stage, which generally takes place on the shoot of the plant. After some weeks, the adult Wallace’s Golden Birdwing butterfly will come out.

The average lifespan of the Golden Birdwing butterfly ranges from 4 weeks to 6 weeks.