Spanish Festoon

• GeneralIts caterpillars feed on toxic plants and store the poison as a defence.
• It flies in a single generation each year and spends the rest of the time as a chrysalis, often for several years in a row if conditions are poor.
• It is protected by the legislation of several Spanish regions, and its conservation depends on keeping the banks and field edges where its food plant grows.
• Its caterpillar feeds exclusively on birthworts, plants loaded with aristolochic acids, and sequesters those toxic compounds, retaining them into adulthood. It is the same strategy used by the American butterflies of the genus Battus.
• Its red, black and yellow colours are an aposematic warning of that toxicity.
• It flies very early in the year, from February to May depending on the area, and has a single annual generation.
• The chrysalis overwinters attached to a stem and can remain like that for more than a year if conditions are unfavourable.
• Its strict dependence on birthworts makes it vulnerable to the ploughing-up of hillsides and to scrub clearance, and it is one of the species monitored by the Zerynthia association, which bears its name.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Mediterranean scrub with birthwort

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zerynthia_rumina

Best time: From February to May, a single generation a year