Late instar
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

It feeds from the underside of a leaf, eating irregular holes in it. When not feeding, it hides in a curled leaf or debris at the base of the foodplant. The Caterpillar is usually attended by small black ants :

(Photos: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

The pupa is pale brown mottled with darker brown. It is slender and has a length of about 1 cm. It is usually formed in a curled leaf or concealed in the debris at the foot of the foodplant.

Female
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

The female adults are brown on top with two black spots and a yellow patch at the tornus of each hind wing.

Male
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

Males are dark brown with a blue sheen, and with a pale arc along the edge of each hindwing.

Female, underside
(Specimen: courtesy of the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney)

Underneath, the sexes are similar. They are white with irregular arcs of fawn dashes. The hindwings each have one large and one small black spot edged in orange by the tornus. The butterflies have a wing span of about 2 cms.

Male, underside
(Photo: courtesy of Bob Miller and Ian Hill)

The eggs are shaped like a mandarin orange, and are laid singly on young shoots of a foodplant. They have a diameter of about 0.6 mm.

The species occurs as various races in Papua - New Guinea and adjacent islands, and the subspecies iole occurs along the north Queensland coast.

Further reading :

Michael F. Braby,
Butterflies of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne 2000, vol. 2, pp. 648-649.

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