Subject: Agrias - Natural History

From: Jim Hanlon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 05:29:34 -0500

Chris:

Thanks for the story on your encounters with the Agrias amydon amydons. I'm
always fascinated to hear personal experiences with this wonderful genus.
There are a few good stories in the Seitz book about earlier collectors'
experiences with wild Agrias in the jungles. Usually they were encountered
along trails feeding on rotting fruit or monkey feces or perched 5 to 10
meters high at the same place for great lengths of time, and only on rare
occassions was an agrias encountered in any of these situations.

With all of the information I have read, from numerous sources including
Seitz, Rebillard, Fruhstorfer, DeVries, D'Abrera, Barselou, Fassl,
etc....there is very little written about the natural history of the Agrias.
It appears that most amydon forms may lean towards slightly (?) higher
elevations (low-mid elevations) except for the amydon pericles which is known
to fly in lowland rainforest from the lower Amazon (Rio Xingu) to the Rio
Solimoes. The sardanapalus forms of course are lowland rainforest canopy
insects and I'm sure fly at mid-elevations as well.

Not much is written on foodplants either. The Amydon philatelica (Costa Rica)
is known to feed on Erythroxylum havanense, a plant containing cocaine
alkaloids, and related to Erythroxylum coca (cocaine plant). Quiiana glaziovi
is a tropical tree which serves as the host for the Agrias sardanapalus
claudina claudianus (southeast Brazil).

My own encounters have been with several magnificent forms of Agrias
sardanapalus including the belsazar and semibelsazar forms in the lowland
forest of Rondonia, Brazil and along the Rio Yarapa in Peru. In the Peruvian
Amazon, I walked in the jungles for 28 days straight and only spotted one
Agrias during the dry season (July/August), but a site worth the wait.

Well enough said for now. The ISBN #'s for A.R. Wallace's book is:
Library Binding $75 ISBN 0-8383-0251-3 and
Cloth Text $35 ISBN 0-8371-1641-4.

See Ya,

Jim Hanlon

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From: [email-masked] (Chris Raper)
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 13:52:59 GMT

On Sun, 31 Mar 1996 05:29:34 -0500, Jim Hanlon <[email-masked]>
wrote:

Hi Jim,

So far our conversation has been half usenet/ half email so I will
convert to the former!  :-)

>occassions was an agrias encountered in any of these situations.

When I saw my two they had been lured down to head height by hanging
very well rotted Plantains, which were absolutely black, from pieces
of string. If you lost one you just had to walk around and sniff! :-)
Someone tried rotten fish bait but got nothing - except Diptera and a
Lycaenid. 

As I said in my earlier post, these records are from Venezuela where
our guides prefered to use rotten fruit/molasses as bait. However, in
Ecuador our guide there always used rotten fish, urine etc. and got
equally good results. When we reversed the baits (fish in Venezuela
and fruit in Ecuador) we didn't get much at all. 

In Venezuela the rotten Plantains would lure in Morpho, Agrias,
Catonephele, Anaea, Opsipanes .....  it was ideal for photography and
I got some quite nice shots (if you ignore the huge, black bannana in
each frame!).

In Ecuador Prepona came to the rotten fish.

Have you seen any similar preferences for bait in different areas and
with different species?

Thanks
Chris R.

--
All views are my own and are not necessarily those of my employer.