Dido

Description:

Franklin Consaervatory Columbus, Ohio blooms and butterflies exhibit.

Habitat:

This species breeds in wet tropical rainforests at altitudes from sea level to about 1200m, but appears to be absent at higher altitudes, and from deciduous forests. Philaethria dido is by far the most widespread species, found from Mexico to the southern Amazon. It is amongst the most beautiful and graceful of neotropical butterflies, but is rarely seen, as it spends the majority of it's life high in the forest canopy. It is however regarded as a fairly common species throughout much of it's range, and I have glimpsed high flying specimens on almost every trip to the neotropics which I have undertaken, including Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru. Novices sometimes confuse this species with the Malachite Siproeta stelenes, a common Nymphaline found in open secondary forest, or around the edges of clearings in primary forest. The wing shape of the two genera are completely different however.