(Photo: courtesy of Kell Nielsen, Gold Coast)

The Caterpillar is often attended by ants, including those from the species :

(Photo: courtesy of Kell Nielsen, Gold Coast)

The pupa is dark brown, and formed within the hollowed-out seed.

Male
(Photo: courtesy of Kell Nielsen, Gold Coast)

The adults are dimorphic: the males and females being different. The tops of the wings of the males are black, with a large bright orange patch on each wing. The females are grey with a dark leading edge to each forewing.

(Photo: courtesy of Kell Nielsen, Gold Coast)

Underneath, both sexes are fawn with white wiggly lines. They both have two tails on each hind wing: a thick one and a thin one. The thick one has a black eye-spot on it ringed with orange, and there is another just beside each thin tail. Presumably, the thick tail looks like a fake head, and the thin one looks like an antenna, and with the eye-spots these are useful for confusing predators about which end of the animal is which.

(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

The butterflies have a wingspan of about 3 cms.

(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

The eggs are green, rough, round, and flattened, with a diameter of about 0.8 mm. They are laid singly on fruit of a foodplant.

(Photo: courtesy of Martin Purvis,
taken in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney)

The species is found in Papua, and along the east coast of Australia, including:

(Photo: courtesy of Kell Nielsen, Gold Coast)

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 741-742.

previous caterpillar

Australian butterflies

Australian caterpillars

Australian moths

next caterpillar