Battus polydamas antiquus

Battus polydamas antiquus
Battus polydamas antiquus (Male)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Papilionidae
Tribe: Troidini
Genus: Battus
Species: B. polydamas
Subspecies: B. p. antiquus
Trinomial name
Battus polydamas antiquus
(Rothschild & Jordan, 1906)

Battus polydamas antiquus is an extinct subspecies of the Polydamas Swallowtail within the family Papilionidae. It is only known by a drawing from 1770 by British entomologist Dru Drury. It was endemic to Antigua.

Drury's illustration depicts a male. The ground color of the fore and hindwings is black. The upperside of the forewings consists of a row of eight green spots. The upper four spots are small. The sixth one is the biggest. The row of spots on the hind wing is narrower.

There are 21 Battus polydamas subspecies. Battus polydamas antiquus is the only subspecies currently listed as extinct. Dru Drury received his butterflies from a variety sources during a period of history when cartography was not precise. There exists, to those who have examined his three-volume work Illustrations of Natural History, a plethora of errors in his taxonomy. Such errors may indicate that the butterfly Battus polydamas antiquus never existed at all. Battus polydamas antiquus may be the only known butterfly to have gone extinct on account of having never existed. It is a hypothetical extinct species.

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, November 27, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.