TAXONOMY AND SPECIES

Oro Province,

Eastern Papua New-Guinea

Oro Province,

Eastern Papua New-Guinea

FORMS: 

LOCATION:  Eastern Papua New Guinea

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Philip Bethge wrote this story about his encounters :

The butterfly's silhouette is sharply outlined against the morning sky. It flies high up into the air, beating its wings slowly, more like a bird than a butterfly. Its long, narrow wings are reminiscent of a swallow's, as they shimmer in the sunlight like iridescent sequins.

ANZEIGE

The insect makes a wide circle around Grace Juo's small stilt house and lands on a bright red hibiscus blossom. In Jimun, the language of the indigenous people, the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing butterfly is called adadakul. It's the world's largest butterfly, with females attaining wingspans in excess of 25 centimeters (10 inches). "We are proud of our butterfly, and we take good care of it," says Juo, glancing at the insect, which has now inserted its long proboscis into the flower.

Juo, a Melanesian, lives in Kawowoki, a small village of huts on the Managalas Plateau in eastern Papua New Guinea. The volcanic soil here is dark and heavy, and the rainforest is an exuberant shade of green. The plateau is the last remaining habitat of any significant size of the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing butterfly, one of the world's rarest insects. Some butterfly collectors would pay thousands of dollars for a single specimen. Local residents like Juo hope that they will soon benefit from the appetites of trophy-hungry collectors.

But multinational corporations believe that oil and natural gas deposits lie beneath the tropical paradise and the rainforest is threatened. Prospectors have also found copper and gold, and oil palm plantations are proliferating in the region.

The temptations of the modern age are reaching Papua New Guinea, a country divided into hundreds of ethnic groups. It has a disastrous infrastructure, is wracked by tribal feuds and is at a high risk for disease epidemics. The history of the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing butterfly isn't just the tale of a rare species. It also revolves around the question of how to go about protecting species in a developing country that is undergoing rapid change.

The search for answers begins behind a barbed-wire fence in Port Moresby, the capital city. Armed guards provide security against the city's criminal gangs, known as "rascals." A rattling air-conditioner helps to stave off the heat and humidity in the office of the organization Partners with Melanesians.

A Conservation Plan

Kenn Mondiai and Rufus Mahuru are sitting at a dark table, explaining their rescue plan. "For the last seven years, we've been discussing ways to save the Managalas Plateau together with the local people," says Mondiai, a heavy man with a round face and a moustache. The activist wants to transform the habitat of the giant butterflies into one of the largest conservation areas in Oceania. "The butterfly helps us convince the people to support this cause," he says. "It symbolizes the diversity and value of our nature."

British naturalist Albert Meek was the first European to spot the giant butterfly in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Hired by the zoologist Lord Walter Rothschild, Meek explored the region in 1906 to find fresh trophies for Rothschild's private zoological museum in the English town of Tring.

One day, Meek discovered a butterfly flying at a high altitude, and promptly brought it down with a shotgun. The adventurer dissected the butterfly and sent it to England. Rothschild named the animal "Ornithoptera alexandrae," in honor of Queen Alexandra, the wife of King Edward VII.

Meek's first specimen was a female. A year later, he captured a male near Popondetta in Papua New Guinea's Oro Province. Today the town can be reached by taking a half-hour flight from the capital. This is followed by an exhausting trip by Land Cruiser on muddy trails.

Several bridges were washed away in a recent flood, and the SUV struggles through hip-high water, even getting stuck in the sandy riverbed for a while. After a grueling, three-hour drive, we reach the Managalas Plateau, 36,000 hectares (about 140 square miles) of privately owned rainforest, populated by about 20,000 people from 10 different cultures, each with its own dialect.

Tall trees, covered with vines and orchids, stand next to wild banana trees, coconut palms and breadfruit trees. The indigenous people grow plantains, yams, ginger, tomato and sweet potatoes on small plots of land.

This is the realm of the giant butterfly. The male looks as if it were wearing a magnificent cloak of turquoise and green, covered with a layer of gold dust. In contrast, the wings of the larger female are a velvety black, interspersed with a few yellow and cream-colored patterns here and there.

Unusual Reproductive Biology

The threatened butterfly is vulnerable because of its unusual reproductive biology. The female lays its eggs exclusively on a poisonous vine calledAristolochia. Once the caterpillars have hatched, they ingest the plant's toxic leaves, making them unpalatable for potential predators.

TheAristolochiawinds its way up into the crowns of jungle trees, which can grow to heights of up to 40 meters (131 feet). The butterfly would be lost without the vine, so propagating theAristolochiais one of the main goals of conservationists.

Conwel Nukara, 31, is the local head of the butterfly project and an expert inAristolochiacultivation. His teeth are stained red from chewing betel nut, a stimulant commonly used by the indigenous peoples of the region. The Melanesian, walking barefoot, leads us into the garden behind his house, where he has set up a greenhouse made of green gauze.

Aristolochiacuttings are planted in neat rows inside the greenhouse, and a number of the butterfly's pitch-black caterpillars are already nibbling away at some of the leaves. Bright red appendages protrude from the animal's body like poisonous barbs, while a yellow band runs around the middle of its body. "We want the animals to reproduce quickly," says Nukara. "The larvae can develop and pupate in peace here. I release the butterflies once they've emerged."

A Threatened Habitat

Nukara is trying to convince his entire community to raise butterflies and, as part of his campaign, he makes regular visits to schools in the area.

A villager brings him a transparent plastic jar. Nukara carefully opens the lid, revealing a dead female butterfly.

"We show these butterflies to our children," he explains, spreading the insect's wings, which have become frayed after being touched by many small hands. "We want them to discover at an early age what a treasure we have in this area."

He means it literally. One of the reasons local residents pay such conscientious attention to the giant butterfly is that they hope to make money with the creatures in the future. But that could prove to be difficult.

The Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is on the red list of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its international trade is banned. From the perspective of species conservationists, the butterfly satisfies all of the criteria to make it a critically endangered species: It lives in only one area, Oro Province, its numbers are unknown, and its habitat is increasingly disappearing.

Farming Threatens Butterflies

The problem is already obvious in the flatlands around the provincial capital Popondetta, which is surrounded by plantations of tightly packed oil palms. Local farmers also grow coffee and cocoa. Hardly any of the rainforest, together with the vines that the butterfly urgently needs, is still left.

Eddie Malaisa is a wildlife officer with the Oro provincial government. He has been concerned with the giant butterfly for the last 25 years. "The butterfly population continues to drop," he warns. "We only find two or three per month on the lowland plains."

On this particular day, Malaisa has an appointment with Paul Maliou, a manager with New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL). Large trucks are parked on the grounds in front of Maliou's office, fully loaded with the red fruits of the oil palm. Across the street are long rows of the trees. When sunlight strikes the long palm fronds, they create shimmering patterns on the ground.

NBPOL signs contracts directly with the farmers and sells their crops for them. Maliou's job is to ensure that this is done in a sustainable way. "We assure that our operations don't go into areas that affect the butterfly," he asserts. But wildlife officer Malaisa begs to differ. There were once 27 butterfly reserves planned for the region, he says, and now "twenty of the areas went to palm oil." Malaisa is left to manage only seven small reserves.

The government employee seems helpless. His budget doesn't even include money for a car, which he needs to patrol the reserves. Ironically, the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is depicted on the flag of Oro Province.

"The butterfly is an important part of our culture," says Malaisa. But he too recognizes that farmers will only protect the insect if they can make some money with it.

To address the problem, Malaisa has proposed compensating all landowners who preserve the insect's habitat by leaving some areas unfarmed. He also favors lifting the ban on trade with the butterfly. "If the landowners don't get anything out of protecting the butterfly, they will change the butterfly habitat to oil palm, cocoa or coffee and the butterfly will become extinct," the wildlife officer warns.

Could Lifting Ban on Trade Help Save Butterflies?

A softening of the trade ban could indeed be the butterfly's last chance. Buyers on the black market would pay up to $10,000 a specimen. If the trade were legalized, Malaisa argues, the farmers could charge several thousand dollars per insect. "What is worse?" he asks, "To legally trade a few butterflies or to watch the animal go extinct?"

Do conservationists have to revise their thinking and accept that species like the Queen Alexandra's Birdwing can only be saved if they have a market value? Activist Kenn Mondiai of Partners with Melanesians also favors adopting a new strategy. "If we want to preserve the forest on the Managalas Plateau, and if no oil palms are to be grown there, then we have to propose alternative sources of income to local residents," he says.

It's afternoon in Kawowoki by now, and half the village has gathered in front of Grace Juo's house to look for a butterfly. The animal that was fluttering around her hut in the morning was a male. Now everyone hopes to be able to show the visitor from faraway Germany a female specimen of the royal butterfly.

While the women roast bananas and sweet potatoes in the embers of a fire, the men dispense advice on how to stalk a butterfly. The insects are usually seen high above the treetops, but only when the sun shines. Otherwise the moisture from the forest would make their wings too heavy.

But the weather is favorable today. Suddenly they all jump up and stare at the tops of nearby large trees. A female Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is gliding through the warm air at a surprisingly fast pace. Grace Juo excitedly lifts her arms up to the sky.

"The world has to know about our butterfly," she says, and with shining eyes she follows the flight of the dadakul, "and then people will come here with bundles of dollars in their hands!"

info alexandrae

Ornithoptera alexandrae, theQueen Alexandra's birdwing, is the largest species ofbutterflyin the world, with females reaching wingspans slightly in excess of 25 cm to 28cm (9.8 inches to 11 inches).^[4][5]Thisbirdwingis restricted to the forests of theOro Provincein easternPapua New Guinea.

The species is endangered and one of only three insects (the other two being butterflies as well) to be listed onAppendix Iof, making commercial international trade illegal.^[6]

History

The species was discovered in 1906 by Albert Stewart Meek, a collector employed by Walter Rothschild to collect natural history specimens from New Guinea. In the next year, Rothschild named the species in honour of Alexandra of Denmark. Although the first specimen was taken with the aid of a small shotgun, Meek soon discovered the early stages and bred out most of the first specimens.

Though most authorities now classify this species in the genusOrnithoptera, it has formerly been placed in the genusTroidesor the now defunct genusAethoptera. In 2001 the lepidopterist Gilles Deslisle proposed placing it in its own subgenus (which some writers have treated as a genus); he originally proposed the nameZeunera, but this is a junior homonym (with Zeunera Piton 1936 [Orthoptera]), and his replacement is Straatmana.

Description

For explanation of terms, see External morphology of Lepidoptera.

Female:Female Queen Alexandra's birdwings are larger than males with markedly rounder, broader wings. The female can reach, and slightly exceed, a wingspan of 25 cm to 28cm (9.8 inches to 11 inches), a body length of 8cm (3.1in) and a body mass of up to 12g (0.42oz), all enormous measurements for a butterfly. The female has brown wings with white markings arranged as two rows of chevrons. The hindwings are brown with a submarginal line of centred yellow triangles. The body is cream coloured and there is a small section of red fur on the brown thorax.

Male:There is sexual dimorphismin this species. The wings are long with angular apices. They are iridescent bluish green with a black central band. There is a pronounced sex brand. The underside is green or blue green with black veins. Males are smaller than females. The abdomen is bright yellow. The wingspan of the males can be approximately 20cm (8in), but more usually about 16cm (6.3in). A spectacular form of the male is formatavus, which has gold spots on the hindwings.

Eggs

The eggs are large, light yellow and flattened at the base, fixated to the surface on which they are laid by a bright-orange substance. Under ideal conditions, the female Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is capable of laying over 240 eggs throughout its life.

Larva Pararistolochia(some species were formerly Aristolochia)

Newly emerged larvae eat their own eggshells before feeding on fresh foliage. The larva is black with red tubercles and has a cream-coloured band or saddle in the middle of its body.

A lateral photograph of the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly caterpillar.

Larvae of this species feed on the shell from which they hatched and then start to extract nutrients from pipe vines of the genus Pararistolochia(familyAristolochiaceae), includingP. dielsianaandP. schlecteri. They feed initially on fresh foliage of the host plants and their own eggs, ultimately causing ring barkto the vine before pupating. Plants of the family Aristolochiaceae contain aristolochic acidsin their leaves and stems. This is believed to be a potent vertebrate poison and is accumulated by larvae during their development.

Pupa

The pupa is golden yellow or tan in colour with black markings. Male pupae may be distinguished by a faint charcoal patch on the wing cases; this becomes a band of special scales in the adult butterfly called a sex brand. The time taken for this species to develop from egg to pupa is approximately six weeks, with the pupal stage taking a month or more. Adults emerge from the pupae early in the morning while humidity is still high, as the enormous wings may dry out before they have fully expanded if the humidity drops.

The adults may live for three months or more and have few predators, excluding large orb weaving spiders(Nephilaspecies) and some small birds. Adults feed at flowers providing a broad platform for the adults to land on, including Hibiscus. The adults are powerful fliers most active in the early morning and again at dusk when they actively feed at flowers.

Males also patrol areas of the host plants for newly emerged females early in the morning. Females may be seen searching for host plants for most of the day. Courtship is brief but spectacular; males hover above a potential mate, dousing her with a pheromone to induce mating. Receptive females will allow the male to land and pair, while unreceptive females will fly off or otherwise discourage mating. Males are strongly territorial and will see off potential rivals, sometimes chasing small birds as well as other birdwing species. The flight is usually high in the rainforest canopy, but both sexes descend to within a few meters of the ground while feeding or laying eggs.

Threats and conservation  Raising the flagship profile with mounted specimens, collected or bred when the insect was not endangered.

The Queen Alexandra's birdwing is considered endangered by the IUCN, being restricted to approximately 100km²(40sqmi) of coastal rainforest near Popondetta, Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. It is nonetheless abundant locally and requires old growth rainforest for its long-term survival. The major threat for this species is habitat destruction for oil palm plantations. However, the eruption of nearby Mount Lamington in the 1950s destroyed a very large area of this species' former habitat and is a key reason for its current rarity.

The species is also highly prized by collectors, and because of its rarity, this butterfly fetches a very high price on the black market, reportedly US$8,500-10,000 in the United States in 2007. In 2001, renowned Canadian researcher Gilles Deslisle was fined CA$50,000 for illegally importing six specimens of Queen Alexandra's birdwings. In 2007, "global butterfly smuggler" Hisayoshi Kojima pleaded guilty to 17 charges after selling a number of endangered butterflies, including a pair of Queen Alexandra's birdwings priced at US$8,500, to a special agent with the US Fish and Wildlife service.

Early collectors, frustrated by the height at which adults fly during the day, often used small shotguns to down specimens, but because collectors demand high quality specimens for their collections, most specimens are reared from larvae or pupae.

Although collectors are often implicated with the decline of this species, habitat destruction is the main threat.

The species is listed on Appendix I of CITES, meaning that international commercial trade is illegal. At the 2006 meeting of the CITES Animals Committee, some suggested it should be moved to Appendix II (which would allow restricted trade in the species), as the conservation benefits of sustainable management perhaps are higher than those of the trade ba