MORPHOLOGY
External characteristics
Male
Wingspan (mm): 53 (Braby, 2004).
Forewings: The underside wing surface has a yellow ground-colour (Braby, 2004).
Female Wingspan (mm):53 (Braby, 2004).
The females are larger than the males. The forewing underside has white coloured subapical spots, which do not run parallel to the termen. The forewing has a brown terminal band (Braby, 2004).
Subspecies and variation
Five to six (D'Abrera, 1982) or nineteen (Yata and Morishita, 1979) subspecies are described; D'Abrera (D'Abrera, 1982) suspects that ssp. adamsoni and ssp. distanti might be the same, since they do not differ greatly in either sexes. The males of ssp. minato are similar to ssp. adamsoni, but has reduced black apical markings on the forewing underside. The wet season form of A. paulina has more black on the apex of the forewing underside. The species is subject to seasonal polymorphism. Females of the wet season form generally have a white underside wing surface and yellow on the hindwing upper side (D'Abrera, 1982). The female subspecies from the South East Asian islands never have uniformly yellow colouration on the upper side wing surface (Yata and Morishita, 1979).