Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Clickable Guide
Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes


TaxonomyBrowseInfoImagesLinksBooksData
Photo#275199
Empress or Emperor? - Asterocampa leilia - male

Empress or Emperor? - Asterocampa leilia - Male
Fort Lowell Park, Tucson, Pima County, Arizona, USA
May 11, 2009
Not at all certain which species this is.

Moved
Moved from Asterocampa.

Asterocampa leilia
is what it looks like to me. The dark ringed "spot" (if you can call it that) that crosses the discal cell of the hind wing is one clue. On A. leilia it is unbroken but sometimes a bit irregular in shape, while in A. celtis it is broken into two distinct offset separate spots, or occasionally two slightly connected (still offset) spots. Same for the same place on the front wings, but you can't see there on this one. A. clyton has a slightly different pattern, with the most prominent feature usually being a curved pale band crossing the hind wing, with a relatively evenly curved dark line edging it (more irregular and broken up in the other two - looking a bit more like a row of irregular spots). Also, A. clyton usually doesn't have the eye spots under the front wing (sometimes they are indicated on the under side a bit, but rarely fully developed and bold). Seems to me that A. leilia is by far the more common one in the Tucson area, but that might just be a result of the timing of my visits (?).

 
Thank you!
Thanks, David. I would tend to concur with your assessment that A. leilia is the more common here.

hate it when my comments get unintentionally duplicated
makes me sound almost pushy - repeating myself like that :)

I think it's my slow dial-up connection that somehow causes the BugGuide programming to think the comment has been submitted more than once.

[[This was a duplicate - till I came back and noticed it.]]

Comment viewing options
Select your preferred way to display the comments and click 'Save settings' to activate your changes.