Its favoured habitat is rainforest of the Queensland wet tropics region, including riverine forest, and particularly near the coast.

Food plants known to be utilised by the larvae are Aristolochia acuminata, A. indica, A. pubera, A. thoszetti, A. australopithecurus, A. deltantha and A. sparusifolia.

The leaves of the introduced Dutchman's pipe (Aristolochia littoralis) will kill the larvae of this species and several other swallowtail butterflies in Australia.

Males occasionally compete for flowers with other nectarivores, such as small birds, and usually succeed at driving them off by aggressively flying towards them.

Adults are very likely to be unpalatable to vertebrates, due to feeding on Aristolochia as a larva, although they do sometimes fall prey to the golden silk orb-weaver spider.