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

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

, northern

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

and eastern

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...

). 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 show an adaptation to h ...

'') of the swallowtail family (

Papilionidae Swallowtail butterflies are large, colorful 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 includes the larg ...

). The taxonomic status of this butterfly is uncertain. ''P. baileyi'' was originally described as a subspecies 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, Lahore, British India – 17 April 1967, Stiffkey, Norfolk) was a British political officer and one of the last protagonists of ''The Great Game.'' His expeditions in Tibet and Assam Himalaya gave h ...

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 N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...

Henan Scientific and Technological Publishing House, Zhengzhou. *Weiss, J.-C. 1992. ''The Parnassiinae of the World''. Part 2. Sciences Nat, 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 is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

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 {{Papilionidae-stub