The False Apollo (Archon apollinus) is a stunning species, seen flying very early in the year from mid-March to mid-April in eastern Greece. The False Apollo belongs to the Parnassinae subfamily of Swallowtails.
Distribution & Flight: Found in eastern Greece near Alexandroupoli, Aegean Islands, Turkey, Lebanon. Syria, Isreal and North west Iran. It is claimed in the 1918 and 1919 the Bulgarian entomologist Delcho Ilchev twice released 500 False Apollo caterpillars from the Entomological station in Sofia (by Kurudag, Gelibolu Peninsula in European Turkey, where now the species is probably extinct). The site of the introduction was said to be north of Alexandroupoli (around Potamos Railway Station).
Habitat & Behaviour: Its habitats range from dry grassland to open woodland depending on the supply of its larval foodplants, Aristolochia pallida, hirta, rotunda and clematitis which can all found to be growing in eastern Greece. The False Apollo can be found from sea level up to 1100m and appears before the oak woodlands come into leaf so giving the butterfly chance to disperse.
Aristolochia hirta and rotunda were both quite visible when I visited the sites in eastern Greece in early April. The plants are quite easy to distinguish and relatively easy to find close to the water courses in the area. According to research (1) carried out Aristolochia hirta and rotunda are the preferred foodplant in this area. Prominent plants are chosen over those growing in scrub areas. Plants were more likely to be used if surrounded by lower cover of grasses.
The False Apollo is univoltine and over winters as a pupa and emerges in early spring.
I saw both sexes flying quite early in the morning when the air temperature was only 6oC in sunny shaded spots.
Research (1) using mark-recapture techniques found the males dispersed on average 490 metres and females more, at 550 metres. The maximum single distance a specimen was found to have flown was around 3 kilometres.
The average size of an egg batch found was 4 with the most being 35 eggs in a batch most of them on Aristolochia rotunda followed by Aristolochia hirta.
Variation: The butterfly is notable for the very extensive scale free areas on the forewings. This increases with age, old specimens have nearly transparent forewings. The males lose much more scaling than the females. The females are usually flushed with extensive red mottling, but this is can be very variable as can be seen below. The loss of scales on the forewings makes the butterfly easy to distinguish on the wing. In flight it looks distorted by the well-marked hindwing and the ghostly forewing.
Close-up of the rear wing of a female False Apollo showing the different coloured scales.
There is an excellent research paper studying this species and also the related Southern Festoon (Zerynthia polyxena) and Eastern Festoon (Zerynthia cerisy) in eastern Greece.
Find out more by watching the video
- (1) Jana Slancarova, Pavel Vrba, Michal Platek, Michal Zapletal, Lukas Spitzer & Martin Konvicka (2015): Co-occurrence of three Aristolochia-feeding Papilionids (Archonapollinus, Zerynthiapolyxena and Zerynthiacerisy) in Greek Thrace, Journal of Natural History, DOI: 10.1080/00222933.2015.1006281
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2015.1006281
