''Parnassius baileyi'', or Bailey's Apollo, is a high-altitude butterfly which is found in southwestern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

(

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

, northern

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

and eastern

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

). It is a member of the snow Apollo genus (''

Parnassius ''Parnassius'' is a genus of northern circumpolar and montane (alpine and Himalayan) butterflies usually known as Apollos or snow Apollos. They can vary in colour and form significantly based on their altitude. They also exhibit altitudinal mel ...

'') of the swallowtail family (

Papilionidae Swallowtail butterflies are large, colorful Butterfly, butterflies in the family Papilionidae, and include over 550 species. Though the majority are tropical, members of the family inhabit every continent except Antarctica. The family includ ...

). The taxonomic status of this butterfly is uncertain. ''P. baileyi'' was originally described as a

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

of '' P. acco,'' later as a subspecies of ''P. rothschildianus'' Bryk, 1931 and also '' P. przewalskii'' (Alphérakyi 1887), and now also treated as a separate species (Weiss 1992), (Chou, 1994). Molecular studies suggest it is the

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

of ''P. acco''. The butterfly was named for

Frederick Marshman Bailey Frederick Marshman Bailey (3 February 1882 – 17 April 1967) was a British Political officer (British Empire), political officer and one of the last protagonists of ''The Great Game.'' His expeditions in Tibet and Assam Himalaya gave him many ...

who collected the first specimens.

Subspecies

*''Parnassius baileyi baileyi'' *''Parnassius baileyi bubo'' Bryk, 1938 *''Parnassius baileyi rothschildianus'' Bryk, 1931

References

*Chou, I. (ed) 1994. Monographia Rhopalocerorum Sinensium (Monograph of Chinese Butterflies) n Chinese Henan Scientific and Technological Publishing House, Zhengzhou. *Weiss, J.-C. 1992. ''The Parnassiinae of the World''. Part 2.

Sciences Nat Sciences Nat was the academic publisher specialising in entomology of the Societé Sciences Nat. The society was established in 1971 and based in the rue de la Mare in Paris. Three years later it moved to the rue des Alouettes and later to Venet ...

, Venette; 87 pp. *Chen, Yong-Jiu et al. 1999 The Phylogeny of 5 Chinese Peculiar Parnassius Butterflies Using Noninvasive Sampling mtDNA Sequences ''Journal of Genetics and Genomics'' 26(3): 203-207

External links

NRM

Holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

of ''baileyi'' in the Swedish museum of Natural History where it is regarded as a subspecies of ''Parnassius acco''
"''Tadumia baileyi'' South"
''Insecta.pro''. baileyi Butterflies described in 1913 Taxa named by Richard South Butterflies of Asia {{Papilionidae-stub