Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 12, 2026

Parnassiinae

The Parnassiinae or snow Apollos are a subfamily of the swallowtail butterfly family, Papilionidae. The subfamily includes about 50 medium-sized, white or yellow species. The snow Apollos are high-altitude butterflies and are distributed across Asia, Europe and North America.

Last revised
Jun 12, 2026
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Parnassiinae
Small Apollo (Parnassius phoebus)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Clade: Pancrustacea
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Papilionidae
Subfamily: Parnassiinae
Tribes

See text

The Parnassiinae or snow Apollos are a subfamily of the swallowtail butterfly family, Papilionidae. The subfamily includes about 50 medium-sized, white or yellow species.1 The snow Apollos are high-altitude butterflies and are distributed across Asia, Europe and North America.2

Tribes

A proposed phylogeny of the Parnassius and related groups.3

This subfamily consists of the following tribes:

References

References

  1. The Butterflies of North America, James A. Scott, ISBN 0-8047-1205-0, 1986
  2. Ackery PR (1975) A guide to the genera and species of Parnassiinae (Lepidoptera:Papilionidae). Bull. Br. Mus. nat. Hist. (Ent.) 31, 4 pdf
  3. Nazari, V., Zakharov, E.V., and Sperling, F.A.H., 2007. Phylogeny, historical biogeography, and taxonomic ranking of Parnassiinae (Lepidoptera, Papilionidae) based on morphology and seven genes. Molecular phylogenetics and Evolution, 42: 131-156. pdf Archived June 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
Further reading

Further reading

  • Glassberg, Jeffrey Butterflies through Binoculars, The West (2001)
  • Guppy, Crispin S. and Shepard, Jon H. Butterflies of British Columbia (2001)
  • James, David G. and Nunnallee, David Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies (2011)
  • Pelham, Jonathan Catalogue of the Butterflies of the United States and Canada (2008)
  • Pyle, Robert Michael The Butterflies of Cascadia (2002)
External links