Biography queen alexandra butterfly pictures
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Queen Alexandra's birdwing
Largest species of butterfly
Ornithoptera alexandrae, the Queen Alexandra's birdwing, is the largest species of butterfly in the world, with females reaching wingspans slightly in excess of 25 to 28 cm (10 to 11 in).[4][5] This birdwing fryst vatten restricted to the forests of the Oro Province in eastern Papua New Guinea.
The species fryst vatten endangered and one of only fyra insects to be listed on Appendix I of CITES, making commercial international trade olagligt. The other three insects listed are butterflies as well. They are the Parides burchellanus, Papilio homerus, Papilio chikae chikae (plus subspecies chikae hermeli).[6]
History
[edit]The species was discovered in 1906 by Albert Stewart mild, a collector employed bygd 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 take
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Queen Alexandra birdwing butterfly
"The world’s largest butterfly is now also one of the most endangered, surviving only on a tiny plot of coastal rain forest in the Popendetta Valley of eastern Papua New Guinea. The spectacular Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae) has been forced into an ever-smaller range by decades of deforestation and natural disaster. This species, which feeds exclusively on the vines and foliage of local pipevine (Aristolochia) plants and thrives only in lowland old-growth rain forest, lost a large part of its habitat with the eruption of Mount Lamington in 1951. Habitat loss later escalated as forests were cleared for logging and farming— for rubber and cocoa plantations and, increasingly, for large-scale palm-oil operations. To add to the pressure, collectors continue to chip away at this fragile population by paying high prices for Queen Alexandra’s specimens on the black market, even though commercial trade in this species is ille
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Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing: Ornithoptera alexandrae
IUCN Red List Conservation Status: Endangered
Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae), is the largest and arguably the most beautiful butterfly in the world. This magnificent species, in which the female may have a wingspan of up to 30cm, was discovered in Papua New Guinea by Albert S. Meek, naturalist to Walter Rothschild, in 1906, and named by Rothschild in 1907 after the wife of Edward VII and mother of George V, (5). Protected by law in Papua New Guinea since 1966, and listed on CITES Appendix I in 1987, this species is severely restricted in its distribution as a result of habitat loss caused by large-scale logging, expanding smallholder agriculture, and oil palm planting.
Description:
Male: The male is smaller than the female (wingspan 147-200 mm) and is predominantly black with large areas of iridescent blue/green colour. In both sexes, the head and thorax are black being distinctly