MORPHOLOGY
External characteristics
Male
Wingspan (mm): 50 - 60 (Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, 2022).
Forewings: The underside wing surface is largely white coloured, with the veins darkened yellow to brown (Kirton, 2018).
Female
The female has paler and larger markings than the male (Yata and Morishita, 1979).
Subspecies and variation
Nine (Yata and Morishita, 1979) to eleven (D'Abrera, 1982) subspecies are described. The wet season form has a darker wing colouration in both sexes. Females of ssp. evagete have a unique characteristic on the wing surface: the pale orange apical spots on the forewing underside. Ssp. cibrya and ssp. corva are both similar to the nominate species, but the latter one is smaller, has in both sexes darker upper side markings and the yellow ground colour is absent or faintly present. Ssp. dissimilis is similar to ssp. corva, but does have a yellowish upper side wing surface ground colour. Ssp. sumatrana is a large subspecies, which has a deep yellow hindwing upper side of both sexes and the males have weak black markings on the underside surface (D'Abrera, 1982). The dry season form has the black markings reduced and the veins are not darkened (Yata and Morishita, 1979).