A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Parnassius phoebus (=Parnassius sacerdos)
This beautiful Alpine species is a large white butterfly with distinctive red and black rings. It is similar only to the Apollo, Parnassius apollo, with the following differences: red marks on forewings near the apex, and boldly striped black and white antennae. The Asian-North American Parnassius phoebus appears not to be conspecific with this Alpine species. Please see notes regarding taxonomy.
Alpine meadow, alt. 1500 m. Flower is Carduus defloratus.
Opinions on taxonomy seem to differ for this species, depending on distribution and nationality of authors. P. sacerdos is considered a subspecies or a separate species depending on the authors: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpenapollo... http://pieris.ch/seiten/main.php?page=ar... http://www.lepinet.fr/especes/nation/lep... http://insectnet.proboards.com/thread/14... http://www.lepiforum.de/bestimmung.pl?md...
Spotted on Jul 22, 2013
Submitted on Jul 29, 2013
24 Comments
Thanks Fyn! Yes, Parnassius is a beautiful genus :-)
Beautiful spotting, Daniele! I love the Parnassius.
Thanks Satyen!
Beautiful!
Thank you Noel!
Wonderful series!
Thank you Jemma!
truly lovely!!
Merci Frederic! Welcome again.
Thank you for your comment Daniele, you have a great and furnished gallery!
Belles photos de Suisse et d'ailleurs!
Félicitations!
Thank you J and LandmarkExpert!
good shot daniele!
Spectacular, Daniele! What a gorgeous butterfly!
Thank you Rieko!
Nice!
Thank you Debbie :-)
Beautiful spotting Daniele! its so nice when you finally stumble across something you have been searching for :-)
Thanks Tamar, Dominik and Kathleen! That was my lucky day :-) I was thrilled. On previous outings I failed to see them, or they didn't cooperate with photography! I saw 3 specimen in total on that day. They other two were flying as a pair further down in the same habitat, but didn't land.
Gorgeous spotting and photos!
Lucky lady!!!
Daniele, this is a truly beautiful Butterfly! Those red spots and black stripes are striking against the white coloration.
Thank you ladies! I have spent hours walking/looking for these and came across this one by chance; it's not always like that :-)
wow, wonderful, one of most beautiful butterflies :)
Amazing :)