Hayk Mirzayans Insect Museum offers training courses, and helps other scientific research centers in completion and maintenance of their insect collections. ITRD acts as the National Identification Service for governmental or non-governmental organizations, publishes various articles, reports, books, data banks and checklists of its holdings, and provides these information free of charge to all visitors. Hayk Mirzayans Insect Museum The Hayk Mirzayans Insect Museum (HMIM) is the largest insect collection in Iran with over 4 million insect specimens, including 20–25,000 local species, hundreds of primary types and paratypes, and a representative collection of exotic insects, especially tropical butterflies. In 1943, Iranian entomologist established a
Swallowtail butterfly for protection from predators. Swallowtail tribes Zerynthiini (Parnassiinae), Luehdorfiini (Parnassiinae) and Troidini (Papilioninae), almost exclusively use the family Aristolochiaceae as their host plants. For example, the eastern black swallowtail's main host plant in the wild is Queen Anne's lace, but they also eat garden plants in the carrot family, including carrots, parsley, dill, and fennel. Adult swallowtails sip nectar, but also mud and sometimes manure. The detailed descriptions of morphological characteristics of the Papilionidae, as quoted in Bingham (1905) are as follows: Stages of development of a papilionid, the giant swallowtail ("Papilio cresphontes") The key characteristics that differentiate the Papilionidae