Melete lycimnia, the Common Melwhite, Primrose Flag or Lycimnia White Flag, is a butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 in the Pieridae

Pieridae

The Pieridae are a large family of butterflies with about 76 genera containing approximately 1,100 species, mostly from tropical Africa and Asia. Most pierid butterflies are white, yellow or orange in coloration, often with black spots...

 family. It is found from Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 to Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

. The habitat consists of lowland rainforests.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 52 millimetre. The appearance of the adults depends on the subspecies and ranges from a white ground colour, narrow black borders, and a yellow spot at the base of the hindwings (ssp. peruviana) to primrose yellow, with wide brown borders (ssp. lycimnia). In all subspecies, females are more yellowish.

The larvae probably feed on Loranthaceae

Loranthaceae

Loranthaceae is a family of flowering plants, which has been universally recognized by taxonomists. It consists of about 75 genera and 1,000 species of woody plants, many of them hemi-parasites, all of them except three having the mistletoe habit...

species.

Subspecies

The following subspecies are recognised:

• Melete lycimnia lycimnia (Surinam)
• Melete lycimnia flippantha (Fabricius, 1793) (Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais)
• Melete lycimnia isandra (Boisduval, 1836) (Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica)
• Melete lycimnia peruviana (Lucas, 1852) (Peru, Bolivia, Brazil: Amazonas)
• Melete lycimnia aelia (C. & R. Felder, 1861) (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia)
• Melete lycimnia eurymnia (C. & R. Felder, 1865) (Colombia)
• Melete lycimnia monstrosa (Butler, 1875) (Panama)
• Melete lycimnia chagris (Staudinger, 1876) (Panama)
• Melete lycimnia harti (Butler, 1896) (Trinidad)
• Melete lycimnia latilimbata (Butler, 1896) (Ecuador)
• Melete lycimnia petronia Fruhstorfer, 1907 (Brazil: Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul)
• Melete lycimnia phazania Fruhstorfer, 1907 (Brazil: Bahia)
• Melete lycimnia theodori Fruhstorfer, 1907 (Brazil: Amazonas)
• Melete lycimnia paulista Fruhstorfer, 1908 (Brazil: São Paulo)
• Melete lycimnia napona (Röber, 1909) (Ecuador, Peru)
• Melete lycimnia narmia Fruhstorfer, 1910 (Brazil: Mato Grosso)