Swallowtail butterfly Swallowtail butterfly Swallowtail butterflies are large, colorful butterflies in the family Papilionidae, and include over 550 species. Though the majority are tropical, members of the family inhabit every continent except Antarctica. The family includes the largest butterflies in the world, the birdwing butterflies of the genus "Ornithoptera". Swallowtails have a number of distinctive features; for example, the papilionid caterpillar bears a repugnatorial organ called the osmeterium on its prothorax. The osmeterium normally remains hidden, but when threatened, the larva turns it outward through a transverse dorsal groove by inflating it with fluid. The forked appearance of the swallowtails' hindwings, which
Comma (music) to the syntonic temperament continuum, including meantone temperaments. In quarter-comma meantone, and any kind of meantone temperament tuning system that tempers the fifth to a size smaller than 700 cents, the comma is a diminished second, which can be equivalently defined as the difference between: In Pythagorean tuning, and any kind of meantone temperament tuning system that tempers the fifth to a size larger than 700 cents (such as 1/12-comma meantone), the comma is the opposite of a diminished second, and therefore the opposite of the above-listed differences. More exactly, in these tuning systems the diminished second is a descending