Common Mormon
Papilio polytes · Butterflies
Common Mormon, a swallowtail
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, 7 February 2026
A swallowtail in the butterfly house at Fairchild, probably the mimetic female form of the Common Mormon, a butterfly of gardens and forest edges across South and Southeast Asia, where the caterpillars feed on citrus and it is one of the commonest swallowtails there is.
She wears the black-white-red pattern of the genuinely unpalatable Crimson Rose swallowtail rather than the plainer look of her own males. Females of this species can carry several different mimetic patterns within one population, each copying a different distasteful model - a level of variation controlled by a single gene that has become a minor case study in how mimicry evolves. The name is a Victorian joke about polygamy.
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