Monarch Butterfly (Danaus Plexippus)

The name "monarch" is believed to have been given in honor of King William III of England, as the butterfly's main color is that of the king's secondary title, Prince of Orange. The monarch was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae of 1758 and placed in the genus Papilio. In 1780, Jan Krzysztof Kluk used the monarch as the type species for a new genus, Danaus. Although works published between at least 1883 and 1944 identified the species as Anosia plexippus, Anosia was generally considered a subgenus of Danaus.