New records of the Lime Swallowtail Papilio demoleus Linnaeus, 1758 (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) in Azerbaijan

E. Ménétriés, collaborator of the Zoological Museum of Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (formerly Emperor’s Museum), was the first entomologist engaged in studying butterflies in Azerbaijan (Ménétriés 1859). Later in the XIX century, J. Lederer (1870a), O. Staudinger (1861), and N.M. Romanoff (1884) carried out their investigations on butterflies in many districts of Azerbaijan, but especially in Talysh and Ordubad. During the Soviet period, the famous lepidopterologist M.A. Rjabov was engaged in studying lepidopterans of the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan (Rjabov 1958). R.M. Effendi was among the first native entomologists who studied the butterfly fauna of Azerbaijan. Effendi reports on 223 butterfly species of Azerbaijan on the basis of his own field research and museum data (Effendi 1971). It is particularly worth mentioning Y.P. Nekrutenko (Nekrutenko 1990) and E. Dydmanidze’s contributions (Dydmanidze 2004) in the research of butterflies of the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan. According to the results of recent research, 248 species belonging to this group (i.e. Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera) are known to Azerbaijan (Tshikolovets and Nekrutenko 2012). Based on these species numbers and distribution information, it can be summarized that the butterfly fauna from Azerbaijan is insufficiently researched. This article reports for the the first record of the Lime Swallowtail Papilio demoleus Linnaeus, 1758 in Azerbaijan (Fig. 1).