Tailed Jay Part 1

Description:

Papilionidae; Papilioninae; Leptocircini; Graphium agamemnon agamemnon Linnaeus, 1758. When posting spottings to Project Noah, the limit on the number of pictures is usually adequate for purpose, but sometimes I want to display more pictures than space permits and this is one such occasion. What I am trying to deal with here is the metamorphosis of G. a. agamemnon from late pre-pupation instar, through pupation and eclosion to adult butterfly. I have attempted this (with other Papilionids) a few times and have always felt that the pictures tell the story better than my words. So, what I will do here is use as few words as possible (that way, I will make fewer mistakes) and the photos will do the job for me. To get around the problem of six pictures per spotting, I have divided the story into three chapters so that I can use a total of eighteen photos. Even that falls far short of showing everything that takes place in this wonderful process, but I think it might be an improvement. The three spottings (chapters) will, obviously, start with this one “Tailed Jay 1” which deals with the pupation. “Tailed Jay 2” will show the eclosion and “Tailed Jay 3” will show the adult butterfly. So, looking at the pictures shown here: #1 Late instar pre-pupation larva. #2 Already indoors, starting to pupate. #3 Mid-pupation. #4 This stage indicates that eclosion is imminent (just hours away from eclosing). #5 This stage tells me “If you want to see the eclosion, don’t look away, sit down and keep your eyes on the pupa. It can happen any time, a few minutes to a couple of hours from now.” #6 The pupation is starting now. (#5 and #6 look almost the same in the photos, but when I took photo #5 the butterfly inside was “twitching” sporadically. In #6 it was non-stop wriggling, to break the exuvia and eclose). If you look carefully, you can see that the colours on photo #6 are faint in comparison with #5. This is because the butterfly has now completely separated from the exuvia and is free to move .

Habitat:

The late instar larva shown in my first picture was spotted on a small Citrus sp. sapling in our backyard. This sapling was well enough developed to allow me to snip off the twig, which the larva was on, so that I could take pictures and make observations at any time, without worrying about the frequent downpours we get at this time of year. All I had to do was put the twig in water so that the leaf with the larva would not wilt and fall off. Then I simply trimmed off all the other leaves (as soon as I was sure that the larva had pupated and would not need to eat). This made sure that I had a clearer view for my photos.

Notes:

The other two parts of this spotting are - https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/13... and https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/81... My related spottings of Papilionid metamorphosis are – https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/50... https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/36... https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/16... https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/20... https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/16...