The larvae feed on Aristolochia species including A. huberiana, A. sprucei, A. littoralis, A. ruiziana, and A. leuconeura.
Subspecies
P. l. lysander Guianas
P. l. parsodes (Gray, [1853]) Brazil (Pará)
P. l. brissonius (Hübner, [1819]) Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, S.Peru, Brazil (Amazonas)
P. l. mattogrossensis (Talbot, 1928) Brazil (Mato Grosso)
P. l. antalcidas Tyler, Brown & Wilson, 1994 Brazil (Pará)
P. l. orinocoensis Constantino, Le Crom & Salazar, 2002 Colombia
Description from Seitz
P. lysander Cr. (= phrynichus Fldr.). Male with white scent-wool in the fold of the hindwing. Outer margin of the forewing in the female rounded; the last two red spots on the hindwing separated, standing obliquely one under the other; female-f. parsodes Gray (= sonoria Gray) has a large white area on the forewing, composed of several spots: in the female -f. arbates Stoll (= anaximenes Fldr.) the forewing has only one white spot; whilst in the female-f. brissonius Gray (5b) the forewing has no white spot at all. A male with yellow instead of red spots on the forewing has been described as ab. bari Oberth. — This species is known from the whole of the Amazon, East Peru and East Ecuador, as well as from the Guianas and Bogota; it has not hitherto been found in Bolivia nor in Brazil proper. It is a swamp species and flies heavily over the wettest places in the shade of the woods.[1]
Description from Rothschild and Jordan (1906)
A full description is provided by Rothschild, W. and Jordan, K. (1906)[2]
Taxonomy
Parides lysander is a member of the aeneasspecies group:[3]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Parides lysander.
^Jordan, K., in Seitz, A. ( 1907) . The Macrolepidoptera of the World. 5: The Macrolepidoptera of the American faunistic region. Papilionidae 1-45. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^Rothschild, W. and Jordan, K. (1906). A
revision of the American Papilios. Novitates Zoologicae 13: 411-752. (Facsimile edition ed. P.H. Arnaud, 1967) and
online
^Edwin Möhn, 2007 Butterflies of the World, Part 26: Papilionidae XIII. Parides Verlag Goecke & Evers Verlag Goecke & Evers ISBN 9783937783277
Collins, N. Mark; Morris, Michael G. (1985). Threatened Swallowtail Butterflies of the World: The IUCN Red Data Book. Gland & Cambridge: IUCN. ISBN 978-2-88032-603-6 – via Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Lewis, H. L., 1974 Butterflies of the World ISBN 0-245-52097-X Page 26, figure 14