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Photo#56551
Butterfly - Papilio polyxenes - female

Butterfly - Papilio polyxenes - Female
Oak Alley Plantation, along the Mississippi River, not far from Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, USA
May 30, 2006
Here it is from the top/back. We looked through the guide, and are thinking it's genus Papilio, but we don't know the difference between the Black, the black phase of the Eastern Tiger, and the Spicebush. We'd love some help, even if we're way off.

Images of this individual: tag all
Butterfly - Papilio polyxenes - female Butterfly - Papilio polyxenes - female

Moved
Moved from Black Swallowtail.

I moved these to the images i
I moved these to the images in the guide page, hoping to get a data point for Louisiana-- I thought the software did it automatically. What else am I supposed to do?

 
It is automatic
but sometimes it's delayed. Click the refresh button on your browser window or just click back after a while, and your state should be on the data map.

 
Yes, it's there now, thanks H
Yes, it's there now, thanks Hannah. I feel apologetic for submitting images that are a little blurry, and obscure some important points. Especially when there are so many beautiful Black Swallowtail images already. If you think they should be trashed, feel free to delete them, or move them to frass. I just included them for that data point- a whole new state . . .

 
I agree, that's a good reason to include them.
When you look through the guide, not every image is a beauty shot (including a lot of mine). Maybe at some future date that will become an issue, but for now it seems we're pretty much leaving it up to individual contributors. I only frass images that add nothing to the guide or are too blurry to be identified.

This image has the added value of our discussion about the male/female differences, too. :)

Black Swallowtail - male
I've just updated the guide page so you can see the male female differences as well as the look-alikes.

 
So it's the Black Swallowtail
So it's the Black Swallowtail because it has a yellow row of dots above the blue, and the dark phase female Tiger doesn't have that. On the Spicebush, the yellow row doesn't go to the edge, and it lacks the yellow edge dot above. But, regarding male and female-- I think our picture obscures the "orange and black spot on inner margin of hindwings," or maybe I don't know what I'm looking for. Just looking at the new pictures in the guide, our row of blue seems larger, and upper row of yellow smaller, both like the female. Where am I going wrong?

 
Dang!
You're right: the top side doesn't have so much yellow as the other males. I was looking at the underside - I thought that every male we have in the guide has this substantial spot band - but now I look closer I find that it must be variable.



This one (above) is definitely female and matches yours top and bottom. I agree, yours is a female, too. I don't think there's any question on the species, though. That inner orange and black spot is often not visible. I find the underside much more useful for ruling out the lookalikes.

I'll edit the guide again - thanks for pointing out this discrepancy. Always a work in progress around here!

 
Thanks so much for your help.
Thanks so much for your help. We're really trying to learn how to do this-- I need to go back and read it a few more times.

 
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(deleted duplicate comment)

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