Black Morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

This was a black morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtail I met last summer. Though all male and most female Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have a yellow-with-black-stripes look, some of the females are mostly black. At a glance the black morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtails may look uniformly black, but if you get a good look at them you can see they have the same black stripes as the yellow ones. They actually have translucent black where their relatives have yellow, and the black stripes stand out pretty well in the right lighting.

In my area we have 2 similar swallowtails, the Spicebush Swallowtail and the (slightly smaller) Black Swallowtail, and neither would show black stripes on a "light black" background. (They also have other pattern differences.)

July 22, 2021 at Fairview Farm
Photo 148401095, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


July 22, 2021 at Fairview Farm
Photo 148401067, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

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