WHAT TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP DOES THE MACULINEA ALCON BUTTERFLY HAVE WITH THE ANTS?

Did you know there is a species of butterfly, Maculinea alcon, that can trick the Myrmica ants into taking care of their young? The butterfly's caterpillar feeding off plants drop to the ground and wait to be picked up by the passing ant. Its waxy coat secretes chemicals that mimic those found on the ants. Mistaking it for one of its own, the ant takes it to its nest where it's taken care of by other ants.

Studying  Maculinea alcon, a beautiful blue butterfly, in the marshes of Denmark, David R. Nash and colleagues found that Alcon butterflies fool Myrmica ants into raising their young, by having larvae with an outer coating that mimics that of the ants. The ants care for the Alcon blue butterfly caterpillars — an ant colony parasite — to the detriment of their own offspring.

The researchers say the observed differences in patterns of surface chemistry of caterpillars between locations “indicate an ongoing coevolutionary arms race between the butterflies and Myrmica” ants.

“The more closely the butterfly mimics the ant cuticle’s hydrocarbon chemistry, the more successful the butterfly is in attracting the ants, but this varies from location to location,” explained a statement from Science Express.

Nash and colleagues say the findings should be considered when reintroducing the threatened Alcon blue butterfly into the wild.

Credit : Mongabay

Picture Credit : Google 

HOW TO CREATE A SMALL BUTTERFLY PARK AT HOME?

Creating a little butterfly patch in the garden at home will help you understand butterflies better and their importance to the ecosystem

Do you love butterflies? Have you ever observed them closely? Flitting from one flower to another, these fascinating creatures add beauty, colour and drama to the natural world. But they also serve an important purpose. Extremely sensitive to changes in the environment, butterflies act as indicators of a healthy ecosystem. If you watch them keenly, they can tell you a lot about the biodiversity in your region.

The world is home to over 20,000 different species of butterflies and India has over 1,500. But many of these are under threat of extinction due to habitat loss, environmental pollution and climate change. Some of these pretty creatures have disappeared from our cities altogether. The IUCN has classified 43 butterfly species in India as endangered.

By planting and protecting indigenous native plants and trees, we can bring back the butterflies, experts say.

If you have a wild patch in your garden or backyard. this could be the ideal place for a butterfly park. All you need to do is, ensure the area has a water body, a sunlit area, a shady area and host and nectar plants. Host plants

These act as lifelines for the butterflies. They lay eggs on the host plant and the caterpillars feed on the leaves. These plants provide nutrition to the hungry caterpillars. Without host plants, butterflies would not visit your garden. One of the common and easy-to-find host plants is the curry leaf. which attracts the beautiful common mormon butterfly.

If you can plant lemon or any plant belonging to the citrus variety, you can attract a number of butterflies in the  swallowtail family.

 Nectar plants

If host plants nourish caterpillars, nectar plants provide food for adult butterflies. Butterflies have a sharp sense of smell and they can spot colours from afar, so they are attracted to fragrant and colourful flowers, which are also a good source of nectar for them. From marigolds to ixora, most flowering plants can attract butterflies. If you don't plan to buy them from a nursery. even a common red hibiscus will do: as it attracts the brightly-coloured danaid egafly butterfly. Even the common milkweed and lantana are excellent sources of nectar for butterflies.

Puddling

If your garden does not include a natural waterbody. you could create a muddy. wet patch by watering an area frequently. Or, you could place a plastic sheet under this muddy spot to manage moisture level.Spread sand along the sides of the muddy place along with leaf litter from time to time. Butterflies, especially males, visit such damp areas to get their daily dose of water, minerals and essential chemicals. This is known as 'mud-puddling.’

Avoid pesticides

 Do not spray pesticide in your garden. This will keep away all the butterflies.

Allow weeds

Do not pluck out grass and small herbs and weeds in your garden as these attract a large number of small butterflies. Maintain a wild patch as it is. You could also reach out to the nearest Butterfly Park in your city to learn more about the native plants in your region and the butterflies they can attract.

Picture Credit : Google 

Do butterflies taste with their feet?

When you eat your food, depending on how it tastes, you can quickly decide whether you like it or not. You can thank the taste buds on your tongue for that important aspect of enjoying life (and discerning displeasure)! Butterflies, however, don’t have taste buds like us mammals. Their mouthparts mainly serve as a straw through which they suck up their food—no chewing necessary. Butterflies have chemoreceptors, a type of sensors, on their feet. These sensors act similar to how our taste buds do. A female butterfly will drum the leaves with her feet to release the juices in a plant. She "tastes" the chemicals released thus not to eat them, but for a different reason. She looks for the appropriate plant chemicals to check if the plant is safe (and not toxic) for the caterpillars before laying her eggs. Apparently, these sensors can detect "dissolved sugars in fermenting fruit", which butterflies love.  Without so-called “taste buds”, how do butterflies know what is nectar and what isn’t? Butterflies do taste their food, but not through their mouthparts. Instead, they do it through their feet! Having an animal’s feet serve as taste organs sounds preposterous, which is probably why researchers never even considered the possibility.

The thinking was that if humans and most other mammals had a tongue for taste, a similar organ must serve the same function in insects. Nature rarely works in such a straight and predictable manner. It was only in the late 1800s that researchers began to take a more out-of-the-box approach to the problem. This is when they discovered that it was the legs, not the mouthparts, that functioned as taste receptors in butterflies!

Insects are a varied bunch of organisms, making it difficult to generalize a feature across them all. Butterflies have mouthparts designed like straws, so they don’t really have a tongue. Such insects whose mouthparts are only designed to suck liquids are called haustellate insects. Lepidoptera, the order to which butterflies and moths belong, and Diptera, the order to which flies belong, are both “leg tasters”. The taste buds are called contact chemoreceptors, taste receptors, or basiconic sensilla in some literature. These chemoreceptors are attached to nerve endings. When chemicals present in the insect’s surrounding come in contact with the chemoreceptors, they activate the nerves, which relay the information to the insect’s brain.

Credit : Science ABC

Picture Credit : Google 

 

Why is my butterfly not eating?



Butterflies don’t eat; that only drink. Though caterpillars constantly eat, once they turn into butterflies, they only drink liquids, primarily nectar from flowers and juices from fruits. Butterflies drink using a proboscis – a tube that works like a straw – because of which they stick to an all-liquid diet.



They do need other nutrients like nitrogen, salts and amino acids. These can be found in tree sap, wet soil and flower pollen. Somewhat less appealing, they can also get these nutrients from rotten fruit or vegetables, faeces, urine, sweat, tears and (the least attractive of all) rotting carcasses!



These nutritional needs stem from the caterpillar’s food. Plants have almost none of the salts that all animals need. Even plant eating mammals like horses and cows need salts – this is also why plants need fertilizers.



 



Picture Credit : Google


What is the amazing migratory journey of Monarchs of Mexico?



The delicate orange and black winged creatures weigh less a gram and live for about a month. But every autumn, a special generation of butterflies is born that will survive seven to eight months and undertake an unbelievable 5,470 km migratory journey! They are the monarch butterflies, one of the largest of their species. And the place to witness this phenomenon is the 56,259 ha Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.



For thousands of years, monarch butterflies have travelled from Canada and USA to Mexico from September onwards to escape the harsh winter of North America. The butterflies thrive in the warm climate of Mexico before returning to their northern homes in spring. Scientists have yet to discover how they accomplish this feat!



Mexico created the Reserve in 1986 to protect the winter habitat of these butterflies. From November to March, millions, probably billions of butterflies swarm around in the Reserve, colouring the trees and mountainsides orange. Trees branches literally sag under their weight! Cars have to slow down to avoid hurting them as they fly across the road.



 



Picture Credit : Google


What are known as woodland butterflies?


Because of the variety of food sources, more species of butterfly are found in woodlands than in any other habitat.



      Some species of butterfly can be found flying at a low level in shady woodland clearings, while others live high among the treetops. Other species of butterfly live along woodland edges, and in areas where people have cleared forests.


    Some of the examples are The Acadian Hairstreak, the Purple hairstreak, the speckled wood and the comma etc. other examples are the White Admiral, large Tortoiseshell, and the silver-washed Fritillary.

What are temperate butterflies?


The word ‘temperate’ is used to describe those are as on Earth where temperature is modest.



       The wide variety of flowers in grassland and woodland clearings means that there are plenty of butterflies.



     The caterpillars of grassland butterflies feed on grass found in meadows, and heath lands. There are many varieties of grassland butterflies. Most popular among them are meadow brown, the Aphrodite, the purple shot copper, the Adonis blue etc. the wall butterfly is another grass feeding species commonly found in Europe, Asia and Africa.


Why is the super family Papilionoidea unique?


The butterfly super family known as Papilionoidea consists of five families. They are named Papilionoidea, pieridae, Lycaenidae, Riodinidae, and Nymphalidae. In other words, all the butterflies except skippers come under this super family.



      The Papilionoidea family members are collectively known as swallowtails. Butterflies in the Pieridae family are whites, orange tips, brimstones and sulphurs. The majority of them are either red or brown or blue in colour.



     The third family, Lycaenidae, is the largest family of all with some 6000 or more species. They are mostly found in tropical areas, but they can be seen in other parts of the world too.



     The fourth sub family Nymphalidae is also very large, like the third subfamily with more than 6000 species.


How are butterflies classified?


Although butterflies are one of the most widely studied insect groups, there is no uniform method to classify them.



        The Symposium of the Royal Entomological Society of London subdivided butterflies into two super-families – the Hesperioidea and the Papilionoidea.



       The first group that is the Hesperioidea has only one family. Skippers as they popularly known, are very good fliers. They are called so because of their ability to fly very fast. They are very similar to moths. Many skippers are dull in colour, like moths. Their larvae feed on a lot of food plants. They rest as pupa in the cocoon, where pieces of dried up leaves are mixed.


What are the physical defense mechanisms commonly employed by butterflies?


Some butterflies have physical defenses. This behavior is common among caterpillars in temperate countries. An example of such a caterpillar is the Nymphalis. If somebody disturbs such caterpillars, they react in unison by lifting their heads up, and thrashing them from side to side to display anger. This method is useful in scaring smaller predators.



      Spines are also an important part of butterflies’ that they use to defend themselves from other wasps and flies. Aposematism or denoting colouration or markings that serves to warn the markings that serves to warn the predators is another good way to frighten away enemies



        The common Mormon of India has female morphs which imitate the unpalatable red-bodies swallowtails, the common rose, and the crimson roes.


Why do some butterflies mimic their neighboring species?


Some butterfly species mimic their neighboring poisonous species to ward off the predators. They often mimic their neighboring species by copying the latter’s colour pattern, along with producing an unpleasant smell and taste.



        Birds and other predators that are familiar with the warning patterns or bright colours of the harmful species mistake these imitator butterflies for their harmful counterparts and go away.



        One such species of butterflies which is good at mimicking is the Ecuador small postman butterfly, which imitates its equally poisonous rainforest neighbor the Ecuador postman butterfly.


What are the main food items of a butterfly?


Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. They suck nectar and other liquids through a small pipe under their heads. This small pipe is called ‘proboscis’. They sip water from damp patches for hydration, and feed on nectar from flowers to obtain sugar for energy.



       Some butterflies get nourished by pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, and dissolved minerals in wet sand, or dirt. Butterflies are pollinators for some species of plants.



      Usually, they do not carry as much pollen load as bees. However, they are capable of transporting pollen over a great distance.



       Some butterflies visit only certain flowers, and avoid others. This phenomenon is called flower constancy. Attracted by the salt in human sweat, sometimes butterflies even land on people.


How do butterflies defend themselves from their enemies?


Butterflies protect themselves from predators through the plants to protect themselves from enemies. This has led to the evolution of bright colours in unpalatable butterflies.



      Camouflage is another technique that butterflies use to escape from their enemies. Camouflage is the technique of blending with the colour of the surrounding to hide from enemies.



      We all might have seen butterflies that look like the leaf of a tree, or a twig in a branch. Such varieties as the oak leaf butterfly and autumn leaf butterfly use this camouflage technique.



     Some others have deimat-ic behavior, such as waving their front ends marked with eyespots as if they were snakes.


What is the flight style of a butterfly?


Butterflies are very good fliers. They have two pairs of large wings covered with scales. Their wings are attached to the thorax. Veins support the wings, and ensure the blood supply.



      Butterflies can fly only if their body temperature is above sudden landings. Speed varies among butterfly species. Poisonous varieties are slower than non-poisonous varieties.


Why is it said that the bodies of butterflies help them to adapt better?


Butterflies use their antennae to sense the air for wind and scents. The antennae contain sensory organs known as sensilae.



       The shape, colour, and structure of the antennae vary from species to species, even though their function remains the same. Butterflies that belong to the family Hesperidia have their antenna tip; modified into a narrow, hook like projection. These butterflies are popularly known as skippers.



     Butterflies taste their food with the help of sensory cells called chemoreceptors, located on their feet.



     Many butterflies use chemical signals, called pheromones. Vision is well developed in butterflies, and most species are sensitive to the ultraviolet spectrum.



    Some species of butterflies have colour vision. Some have organs of hearing, and some others make stimulatory and clocking sounds.