common bluebottle butterfly

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WORLD OF BUTTERFLIES .....COMMON BLUEBOTTLE....WATERCOLOUR...15CM*15CM..2013...[ FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF NEL RODRIGUES] ....Graphium sarpedon, the common bluebottle or blue triangle (Australia), is a species of swallowtail butterfly found in South and Southeast Asia, as well as parts of Australia. There are approximately 16 subspecies with differing geographical distributions. Upperside opaque black. Fore and hind wings crossed from above the tornal area on tho hind to near the apex of the fore wing by a semi-hyaline broad pale blue medial band which is broadest in the middle, more or less greenish and macular anteriorly; the portion of the band that crosses interspaces 6, 7 and 8 on the hind wing white; beyond the band on the hind wing there is a sub-terminal line of blue slender lunules. Underside similar, ground-colour dark brown. Hind wing: a short comparatively broad sub-basal band from costa to sub-costal vein, and the postdiscal area between the medial blue band and the sub-terminal lunules velvety black traversed by the pale veins and transversely, except in interspaces 6 and 7, by narrow crimson lines; lastly, a crimson spot near the tornal angle with an admarginal yellowish-white spot below it. Antenna, head, thorax and abdomen brown, the head and thorax suffused with greenish grey; beneath: the palpi, thorax and abdomen touched with dingy white, the abdomen with two whitish lateral lines. Male has abdominal fold within grey, furnished with a tuft of long, somewhat stiff white hairs. The common bluebottle is distributed throughout south and southeast Asia. Subspecies appear in India and Sri Lanka (G. s. sarpedon and teredon), China and Taiwan (G. s. semifasciatus and connectens), Japan (G. s. nipponum), Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, New Guinea (G. s. messogis), and Australia (G. s. choredon). In India it occurs in Southern India in the Western Ghats and in the Himalayas from Kashmir in the west to Myanmar in the east. The adult common bluebottle feed