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January 28, 2008
Australia's Largest Lepidopterans
Posted by neil, at 09:00 AM
The Bleeding Heart (Homalanthus novoguineensis) is the preferred food plant of the caterpillar (above), which attains a length of 12 cm and produces Australia's largest moth: The Hercules (Coscinocera hercules).
The female moth has a slightly paler and larger wing area than the male (below), whose wingspan reaches up to 27 cms.
The female Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera euphorion) (below) is Australia's largest endemic butterfly species, reaching a wingspan of up to 16 cm. Males are usually a few centimeters smaller.
The caterpillar of this species (below) prefers to feed upon the native rainforest vine Dutchman's Pipe (Aristolochia tagala).
Posted by neil at January 28, 2008 09:00 AM
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Comments
i have tried many times to take photos like that on my bush walks but never succeeded. Wonderful stuff.
Posted by: Jan Pompe at January 28, 2008 08:39 PM
A breath of fresh air, Neil. No politics, dogma, or dodgy statistics in sight. My idea of science. As you are probably aware, there is some wonderful work on self-organized pattern formation in nature, such as lepidopteran wings.
Ref: Camazine et al. (2001) Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Princeton University Press.
Posted by: Green Davey Gam Esq. at January 29, 2008 10:00 AM