Butterfly 1 - Bulgaria

[dj]

Hi Guys, saw this beauty while out yesterday, thought it looked like a spanish festoon but realised its not, any one know what it is?
thanks

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[bobw]

Looks like Zerynthia polyxena.

Bob

[thanos]

Yeap definitely. And it's a male. Nice to check that they are out. We had a really long winter here (cold until very recently), as well last year, when I had gone to south C.Greece(usually the species are out earlier there than in N.Greece/Bulgaria) on April 22 (when at a locality there in normal years it is full of polyxena polymnia*, incl. the f.ochracea in good percentage) and even I met snow and just saw a single male. So, this year I delayed a bit my visit to there..,and I hope that in a few days I will be able to find a lot of specimens of this nice species, and also other interesting ones like Papilio alexanor atticus etc .

[*Nardelli and Hirschfeld (2002) synonymized ssp.thusnelda Fruhstorfer, 1908 (type locality: C.Greece;Thessalia) with ssp.polymnia Millière, 1880 (type locality: C.Greece;Euboea, in Sterea Ellas), so the population of that locality in south C.Greece(in Sterea Ellas), where I collect the species, should belong to polymnia].

Your subspecies in Bulgaria [according to Nardelli and Hirschfeld (2002)] is carmenae Sabariego and Martinez, 1991.


Thanos

[Adam Cotton]

The latest supplement volume of the Bauer & Frankenbach Butterflies of the World series, currently in press, covers Parnassiinae (excluding Parnassius at the species level), and in this work Bollino & Racheli synonymize carmenae with nominate polyxena, but polymnia is still treated as a separate subspecies.

In case you are wondering how I know about the contents of an unpublished book, I spent the past few months editing the text ;D, and just completed the work about a month ago, so it should be published quite soon.

Adam.

[dj]

Thanks Guys, brilliant as usual.

[thanos]

Thanks Adam for this update.