Wing Color Pattern as the Releaser of Mating Behavior in the Swallowtail Butterfly, Papilio xuthus L.(Lepidoptera : Papilionidae)

Abstract

The male of Papilio xuthus, a Japanese black-and-yellow Swallowtail butterfly visually determines his conspecific mate during courtship. Field experiments with various dummies and models reveated that the visual releaser of the male's approach is not the color of the wing alone but its striped pattern of black and yellow.