Relatively large butterflies. The wings are usually dappled, brown, orange or blue colours predominating. Fore legs are reduced and useless for walking. The sex-brands are situated on the hind wings. The larvae are trophically connected with Asclepidaceae and Apocynaceae.

The family is distributed in tropics and subtropical, the majority of species inhabiting Indo-Australian region. The world fauna includes about 450 species, from which only one reaches the Asian Russia.

Type species: Papilio aglea Stoll,1782].

TYPE LOCALITY:: China.

RANGE: Central and East Asia. A migrating species, the maximal recorded length of migrations being 1100 km. Some specimens occasionally penetrate into South Primorye, the Sakhalin and the Kunashir (and also Hokkaido, where the species can not establish a permanent population). Flight in the southern islands of Japan lasts throughout the summer.

FLIGHT PERIOD: in the southern Japan and Korea throughout the year.

PREIMAGINAL PHASES: studied in Japan (Fukuda et al., 1982). Probable foodplant in Primorye: Cynachium (Asclepiadaceae). Eggs: lightly coloured, bullet-shaped with ribs, laid singly on the under surface of the foodplant leaves. Larva: dappled due to alternating spots: roundish blue spots on the back, large irregular in shape yellow spots and small white spots on the sides, irregular blue spots above the prolegs; the ventral side is dark; the larva bears a pair of thin blueish processes on the prothorax and blueish caudal processes on segment 11 twice as less in size. Pupa: suspended by the tail, stout, almost roundish, greenish-yellow with black dots at dark cremaster and in a transversal row just before the abdomen, besides, several dots are scattered over the thorax; the wing cases with one large and several small white spots.

PECULIAR TRAITS OF IMAGO: F.w.l.: 50-56 mm; the wing upperside greenish-white with black veins and a black ornament at outer margin.