Butterflies of
Thailand, Malaysia &
Borneo
Marbled Mapwing
Cyrestis cocles
FABRICIUS, 1787
Family - NYMPHALIDAE
subfamily -
CYRESTINAE
Tribe - CYRESTINI
introduction
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habitats |
lifecycle |
adult behaviour
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Cyrestis cocles earli
f.
formosa,
Bukit Tapah, West Malaysia |
Introduction
The Mapwings, together with their relatives in
Chersonesia are medium sized
butterflies noted for their attractive patterns of fine lines,
and tailed hindwings.
The genus
Cyrestis comprises of 25 species,
of which 17 occur in the Oriental region. Only 4 occur in West
Malaysia - themire,
cocles, nivea
and maenalis. An additional species
theresae occurs on Sumatra and
Borneo, while the remainder are found variously from India to
Papua New Guinea and the Solomon islands; except for a single
species camilla, found in Africa
and Madagascar.
Cyrestis cocles is distributed from
Sikkim in India, to Myanmar, Thailand, West Malaysia, Sabah,
Sarawak, Brunei, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, but is absent from
Sumatra and Java.
The butterfly
is seasonally dimorphic - the wet season morph f.
formosa is illustrated above. The
dry season morph f. earli has a
very pale creamy white ground colour, patterned with very fine
orange-brown striations. In both forms the male and female are
similar, although the female is a little paler and has slightly
more rounded wings. Cyrestis themire is very similar to the
formosa morph of
cocles, but more heavily marked.
Habitats
Cyrestis cocles is the rarest
member of the genus in Malaysia. It is found in primary and
secondary forest at elevations between sea level and about 800
metres, and normally encountered along wide forest trails, or in
quarries or other cleared areas, often close to human
habitations.
Lifecycle
The early stages of cocles appear to be unrecorded.
Corbet &
Pendlebury state that the related Cyrestis themire has
been bred on Streblus ilicifolius
( Moraceae ), and that the foodplants of other
Cyrestis species include
Tetracera sarmentosa and
Ficus".
Adult behaviour
Both sexes have
a gentle but deceptively rapid gliding flight. They will venture
out of the forest to bask on gravel roads on overcast days, but
in sunny weather usually remain in the shade.
Males can
sometimes be found at moist spots in forest edge habitats, e.g.
in May 2009 at Tapah Hills in West Malaysia I watched a group of
5 males imbibing moisture from damp gravel in the shade beside
an Orang Asli dwelling. Usually only 2 or 3 of the butterflies
would be on the ground at any moment, while the others hid under
nearby foliage, with wings fully outspread. Periodically one of
these would flutter down, glide in a low tight circle, and
settle to feed, which prompted one or more of the males already
on the ground to fly up and settle under a leaf of the same
bush.
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