Parnassius phoebus, known as the Phoebus Apollo or small Apollo, is a butterfly species of the swallowtail butterfly family, Papilionidae, found in the Palearctic and North America.
Male: the costal spots of forewing usually without red, the anterior one sometimes with white pupil; submarginal band faint and abbreviated or interrupted; no spot at hind margin; hindwing with red ocelli which are usually small, and sometimes with a submarginal row of feebly marked black spots; the veins often marked with well-defined elongate black punctures.
Female: with better defined and more extended markings; vitreous margin of forewing separated from the submarginal band by large white uniform spots; the second costal spots often pupilled red, connected with one another by black scaling, on disc sometimes blackish shadows; on hindwing a greyish vitreous marginal band, distinct submarginal half-moons, which are contiguous, forming a band, two larger red ocelli, the posterior one occasionally with white pupil; anal spots sometimes intensified and one of them filled in with red.
Male
Male, bottom
Female
Female, bottom
Habitat
Mountains at 1,600 to 2,800 meters, in particular between 1,800 and 2,200 meters above sea level, in humid damp and wet places such as edges of mountain streams and near springs and fresh seepages and in valleys (Schneetälchen) according to the preferences of its caterpillar food plant.
Parnassius smintheus, which is a closely related species found in North America, is sometimes classified as a subspecies of Parnassius phoebus. Some researchers also tend to split the North American populations of P. smintheus into two or three species, the northernmost of which are usually accepted as being part of P. phoebus, while the rest are considered to be P. smintheus, though sometimes P. behrii is treated as a species, rather than a subspecies of smintheus.[2]
Bernard Turlin et Luc Manil, 2005 Étude synoptique et répartition mondiale des espèces du genre "Parnassius" Latreille 1804 ("Lepidoptera Papilionidae") Luc Manil, Paris.
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