BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS, CATERPILLARS AND VLADIMIR NABOKOV

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS


birdwing butterflies

Moths and butterflies are members of the order of Lepidoptera, which in Greek means scale (lepido) and wing (ptera). Scale is a reference to the millions of tiny overlapping scales, actually modified hairs, the cover the insects’ wings. Although there are many exceptions, moths generally fly at night and butterflies fly during the day. Both kinds of insects begin as caterpillars and emerge from cocoons, and are important pollinators and food sources for birds and other creatures, About 150,000 Lepidoptera species are known to science. Butterflies make up less than 17 percent of the Lepidoptera. The rest are moths.

Moths tend to be brown or grey or another drab color (although some are quite colorful) and are active mostly at night. Their antennae are shaped like miniature double-edged combs. The swallowtails form their won family, the Papilionidae, within the Lepidoptera. This family contains over 500 species worldwide, of which the common yellow swallowtail is the best known.

Lepidopterists are entomologists that study butterflies and moths. The British Museum has the world’s largest butterfly collection, with about 8.5 million specimens. The McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Environmental Research and the Peabody Museum at Harvard also have large collections. North American Butterfly Association is a group engaged in butterfly conservation.

Book:”The Dangerous World of Butterflies” by Peter Laufer. Entomologist Arthur Shapiro is a butterfly expert that has written many books about butterflies.

Websites and Resources on Butterflies: Butterfly Website butterflywebsite.com ; Butterfly Info greennature.com ; BugGuide bugguide.net ; Lepidoptera cals.ncsu.edu/course ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ;Butterfly Photos floridanaturepictures.com/butterflies ;The Butterfly Site thebutterflysite.com ; Lepidoptera Resources chebucto.ns.ca/Environment/NHR/lepidoptera ;

Websites and Resources on Insects: Insect.org insects.org ; Insect Images.org insectimages.org ; BBC Insects bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Insect ; Insect and Arachnid entomology.umn.edu/cues/4015/morpology ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Virtual Insect home.comcast.net ; National Geographic on Bugs National Geographic ; Smithsonian bug info si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo ; Entomology for Beginners bijlmakers.com/entomology/begin ; BugGuide bugguide.net ;

Websites and Resources on Animals: ARKive arkive.org Animal Info animalinfo.org ; Animal Picture Archives (do a Search for the Animal Species You Want) animalpicturesarchive ; BBC Animals Finder bbc.co.uk/nature/animals ; Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu ; International Field Guides media.library.uiuc.edu ; animals.com animals.com/tags/animals-z ; Encyclopedia of Life eol.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org ; National Geographic National Geographic ; Animal Planet animal.discovery.com ; Wikipedia article on Animals Wikipedia ; Animals.com animals.com ; Endangered Animals iucnredlist.org ; Endangered Species Resource List ucblibraries.colorado.edu ; Biodiversity Heritage Library biodiversitylibrary.org

Butterfly Characteristics and Behavior

For the most part butterflies are colorful and active during the day and have antennae that look likes clubs. Many species of butterfly have brightly-colored wings. The bright colors of butterfly wings and some caterpillars advertize the fact that eat toxic plants and are poison to potential predators. Many butterflies see in ultraviolet light and possess wings that display ultraviolet shades.

Adult butterflies feed on nectar while either perched or hoovering above a flower, by thrusting their long proboscis deep inside the nectar glands of the flower. When not in use the proboscis rolls up under the head of the butterfly like a tiny garden hose. Many types of flowers such as lilies have co-evolved with butterflies. These generally have a deep tubular structure, with stamens and pistils thrust far out in such a way that they deposit pollen on a insects’s head while it feeds on nectar.

For a butterfly feeding is just a diversion. The caterpillar spent most of his life filling the niche of eating, growing and developing. The primary duty of the butterfly is to mate.

Butterflies use their antennas to navigate. Scientists have determined this by painting the antennae of monarch butterflies black and found the butterflies couldn’t orient themselves southward and so got lost during their migration from North America to Mexico. Like most creatures, monarch butterflies have a circadian clock in their brain that helps them know where they are and adjust their orientation when they migrate south. Monarchs also have a second clock in their antennae, which senses light and is crucial to finding their way.

The primary duty of the butterfly is to mate. After receiving sperm from her mate, the female deposits her eggs on the stems and leaves of plants. The eggs hatch into larvae, called caterpillars. Many species lay their eggs on specific plants which the caterpillars feed on when they hatch. After ejaculating sperm some butterflies produces a kind of wax which seals the female's orifice and prevent competitors from impregnating the female.

Butterfly Wing Colors and Markings

Butterfly wings are covered with microscopic scales that are key to giving them color. The incredible range of tones and shades are achieved by combining simple colors in different proportions, much like a digital color printer. Some scales even have ridges that diffuse and refract light, producing iridescent and metallic hues that change dramatically as the insect moves. [Source: Kevin Short, Daily Yomiuri]

Some butterflies and moths have large circular, high-contrast marks on their wings that were long though to be mimicking the eyes of predators’ of the butterfly’s own enemies. According to research by Martin Stevens of the University of Cambridge that does not seem to be the case. Rather the predators are simply avoiding the conspicuous marks and striking patterns as such marks and patterns are often an indicator of toxic substances. Stevens and his team tested their hypotheses by creating artificial butterflies from meal worms with paper “wings” with eye markings as well as wings with rectangles, numbers and single large spots and found that wild birds devoured the worms with shapes and numbers to the same degree as those with eyes. Why then do to the eye markings appears? It may have something to do with the way the wings develop.

Moths

Moths make up about 80 percent of order that includes moths and butterflies. Moths come in a starling variety of colors and patterns. Their colors equal or maybe even exceed those of butterflies but are not as well appreciated because moths are generally smaller and mostly active only at night.

Moths are a favorite prey of birds. To avoid birds moths try to blend in with their background during the day when birds are active and fly around at night. Moths have other unique features. They don’t get caught in spider webs, because the scales in their wings get stuck to the web simply break away from the wing and the moth is able to make his getaway. Some species of moth have a long slender tube that is attached to their mouth and this is used to suck nectar from flowers.

In the 1960s scientists studying moth eyes at the nano scale level discovered that their multi-faceted surface is structured to reduce reflection. Engineers in Freiburg, Germany used lasers to sculpt similar surfaces on a photosensitive lacquer film. Computer screens covered with the film, covered 16 million “dots,” gave off virtually no glare.

The death’s head moth is moth is a hawk moth with thorax markings that resemble a skull. The killer in the film “Silence of the Lambs” collected these moths.

The luna moth is big moth with wingspan that can exceed 10 centimeters. Its life span is rather short however: only a week or two of spending much of its time trying not be eaten by birds and bats while trying to find a mate. Their luminous green color begin to fade almost immediately after they are caught.

An unusual species of white orchid found in Madagascar holds nectar at the extreme end of a foot long spur. Darwin postulated in the 19th century that there must be a species of moth with an 11 inch proboscis that could reach the fluid and pollinate the flower. Even though he was scoffed at by other scientists 40 years later a night flying moth was discovered in the island with a 12 inch tongue.

Caterpillars

Caterpillars are butterfly and moth larvae. After they emerge from an egg they do little but eat, move to another place to eat and grow. The usually feed on leaves. As they grow they molt their old skin. When the caterpillars are full grown they builds cocoons (chrysalis). After several week or months a butterfly or moth breaks out the cocoon. Describing a cabbage caterpillar, the famed French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre wrote: “What an appetite! What a stomach!...To eat and digest, to accumulate reserves for the upcoming transformation into a butterfly, that is a caterpillar’s one and only business.”

Most caterpillars have simple eyes that can only distinguish light and dark and sharp mandibles for cutting up leaves into bite-size pieces of food. The overwhelming bulk of a caterpillars is taken up by its 10-segment abdomen, which houses the creature’s awesome digestive system, which is essentially one long intestine.

Caterpillars often feed on leaves and the patterns they make on leaves are telltale signs of their presence. Birds like to feed on plump caterpillars and often fly over trees looking at leaves for evidence of caterpillars which they can feed on. As a countermeasure to this the Geometridae caterpillar cuts the leaves it eats carefully around the edges, moving in and out so the contour of the leaf keeps it form and just gets smaller and smaller.

Caterpillars are marked with a wide range of colors and patterns and incredible combinations of stripes and spots in shades of red, yellow and orange. Sometimes the caterpillars are more colorful than the butterflies they spawn. . Many species have “eye-spots.” These may help to scare away predators but they also serve a physiological function: they are part of the insects’ spiracles, which help the insect to breath.

Caterpillars can be quite damaging to plant life, consuming all the leaves on a bush or tree. They in turn are a major food source for birds and large predatory insects. Because they sit in plain sight munching away they are easy targets. Many have developed defenses such as camouflage, mimicry, poisons and sharp spines for defense.

Some caterpillars have sharp spines tipped with poison that can deliver a nasty sting. But these species are few in number and easy to tell apart. The vast majority of caterpillars neither bite nor sting. Caterpillars are sometimes confused with multi-legged centipedes and millipedes, which are often poisonous, because caterpillars appear to have eight pairs of legs. A closer look however reveals the front three pairs are true legs and the rear “legs” and are just fleshy protuberances, called prolegs or “false legs,” that help the caterpillar grip the surface of a branch or leaf.

Vladimir Nabokov on the Caterpillar to Pupa Transformation

Caterpillars pass through five larval stages, or instars, before metamorphosing into adults. The caterpillar often changes its markings, patterns and colors and looks like a completely different species in its different stages. All caterpillars have glands capable of producing silk, which are usually used to make a cocoons. The silkworm is a caterpillar for a kind of moth. In Hawaii, a flesh-eating caterpillar was discovered that traps its prey — mostly snails — with silken threads like a spider.

In a lecture on caterpillars and butterflies at Cornell in 1951,Vladimir Nabokov told his students, “Though wonderful to watch, the transformation from larvae to pupa... is not a particularly pleasant process for the subject involved. There comes for every caterpillar a difficult moment when he begins to feel pervaded by an odd sense of discomfort. It is a tight feeling — here about the neck and elsewhere, and then an unbearable itch. Of course he has molted a few times before, but “that” is nothing in comparison to the tickle and urge he feels now. He must shed that tight dry skin, or die. As you have guessed under that skin, the armor of a pupa — and how uncomfortable to wear one’s skin over one’s armor — is already forming.”

“The caterpillar must do something about that horrible feeling. He walks about looking for a suitable place. He finds it, he crawls up a wall or a tree-trunk. He makes for himself a little pad of silk on the underside of that perch, he hangs himself by the tip of his tail or last legs, from the silk patch, so as to dangle head downwards in the position of an inverted question-mark, and there “is” a “question” — how to get rid of his skin. One wriggle, another wriggle — and zip the skin bursts down the back and he gradually gets out of it working with shoulders and hips like a person getting out of sausage dress. Then comes the most critical moment — You understand that we are hanging head down by our last pair of legs, and the problem now is to shed the whole skin — even the skin of those last legs by which we hang — but how to accomplish this without falling?”

“So what does he do this courageous and stubborn little animal who already is partly disrobed. Very carefully he starts working out his hind legs, dislodging them from the patch of silk which is dangling, head down — and then with an admirable twist and jerk he sort of jumps “off” the silk pad, sheds the last shred of hose, and immediately in the process of the same jerk-and-twist jump he attaches himself anew by means of a hooks that was under the shred of skin on the tip of his body. Now all the skin has come off, thank God, and the bared surface, now hard and glistening, is the pupa, a swathed-baby-like thing hanging from that twig — a very beautiful chrysalis with golden knobs and a plate-armor wingcases. This pupal stage lasts from a few days to a few years.”

Vladimir Nabokov on the Pupa to Butterfly Transformation

On the transformation from pupa to butterfly Nabokov told his students, “After two or three weeks something begins to happen. The pupa hangs quite motionless but you notice one day that through the wingcases, which are many times smaller than the wings of the future perfect insect — you notice that through the horn-like texture of each wingcase you can see in miniature the pattern of the future wings, the lovely flush of the ground color, a dark margin in a rudimentary eyespot.”

“Another day or two — and the final transformation occurs. The pupa splits as the caterpillar had split — it really is the last glorified mouth, and the butterfly creep out — and in its turn hangs down from the twig to dry. She is not handsome at first. She is very damp and bedraggled. But those limp implements of hers that she had disengaged, gradually dry and distend, the veins branch and harden — and in 20 minutes or so she is ready to fly . You have noticed that the caterpillar is a “he”, the pupa is “it” and the butterfly is “she”. You will ask — what is the feeling of hatching? Oh, no doubt , there is a rush of panic to the head, a thrill of breathlessness and strange sensations, but then the eyes sees a flow of sunshine, the butterfly sees the world, the large and awful face of the gaping entomologist.”

Butterfly Trade

In the “The Dangerous World of Butterflies”, journalist Peter Laufer describes the sordid underworld of butterfly hobbyists in which “nefarious collectors fuel criminal butterfly poachers worldwide.”

The Butterfly Breeders Association is a group that caters to the needs of butterfly collectors and is regarded as the enemy by the North American Butterfly Association, a conservation group.

The range of many butterfly species in temperate areas in shifting northward with global warming being the prime suspect of being behind the move. One study of 35 species of non-migratory butterfly in Europe found that two thirds of the species had shifted their home ranges by 45 to 240 kilometers northward.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: Mostly National Geographic articles. Also “Life on Earth” by David Attenborough (Princeton University Press), New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2011


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