Gulf Fritillary

The Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, a striking, bright orange butterfly of the family Nymphalidae, subfamily Heliconiinae. These were formerly classified in a separate family, the Heliconiidae or longwing butterflies, and like other longwings this species does have long, rather narrow wings in comparison with other butterflies. It is not closely related to the true fritillaries. It is a medium to large butterfly, with a wingspan of from 6 to 9.5 cm. Its underwings are buff, with large silvery spots. It takes its name from the fact that migrating flights of the butterflies are sometimes seen over the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf Fritillary is commonly seen in parks and gardens, as well as in open country. Its range extends from Argentina through Central America Mexico, and the West Indies to the southern United States, as far north as the San Francisco Bay Area on the west coast. It is occasionally found further north in the US.

Ulysses Butterfly, Kuranda State Forest, Queensland, Australia

The Ulysses butterfly (Papilio ulysses), also known as the blue mountain butterfly, is a large Australian swallowtail. The Ulysses butterfly has a wingspan of about 14 cm (5.5 inches). It lives in northeastern Australia along the coast of Queensland. It inhabits tropical rainforest areas and suburban gardens. The Ulysses butterfly's favourite food plant is euodia (Melicope elleryana), a tree with clusters of small pink flowers growing straight out of the branches. The upperside the wings are an iridescent electric blue; the underside is a more subdued black and brown in colouration. The colours are produced by the microscopic structure of the scales.[1]
Ulysses butterfly at the Melbourne Zoo
Ulysses butterfly at the Melbourne Zoo

The female of the species differs from the male in that she has little crescents of blue in the black sections of her hind wings. When the butterfly is perched the intense blue of its wings is hidden, helping it to blend in with its surroundings. When in flight the butterfly can be seen hundreds of metres away as sudden bright blue flashes. This butterfly is used as an emblem for Queensland tourism.

Males are strongly attracted to blue objects which they mistake for females. Females favour small trees up to 2 metres tall to lay their eggs.

Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

The Eastern tiger swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, is a large (12 cm wingspan) swallowtail butterfly. It is found in the Eastern United States, as far north as southern Vermont, and as far West as extreme Eastern Colorado. It flies from spring through fall, and most of the year in the southern portions of its range, where it may produce two or three broods a year. In the Appalachian region, it is replaced by the closely-related and only recently described Papilio appalachiensis, and in the north, it is replaced by the closely-related Papilio canadensis. These three species can be very difficult to distinguish, and were formerly all considered to be a single species.

Adult males are yellow, with four black "tiger stripes" on each fore wing. The trailing edges of the fore and hind wings are black which is broken with yellow spots. On the medial margin of the hind wing next to the abdomen there are small red and blue spots.

There are two morphs of adult females, a yellow and a dark one. The yellow morph is similar to the male, except that the hind wings have an area of blue between the black margin and the main yellow area. In the dark morph, most of the yellows area are replaced with a dark gray. A shadow of the "tiger stripes" can still be seen on the dark females. The dark form is more common in the Southern portions of the range, especially in areas also inhabited by the pipevine swallowtail, which it seems to mimic.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails often rest with their wings fully spread, particularly if the sun is out.

Female lays spherical green eggs on the top of leaves of host plants. After hatching, the caterpillars often eat the shell of their egg. The first instars are dark and mimic bird droppings. The larvae eat the leaves of a wide variety of trees and shrubs, including cottonwood, tulip tree, sweet bay, and cherry. Adults are strictly diurnal; they start to fly towards noon and by and by return to rest throughout the afternoon (Fullard & Napoleone 2001).

It is the state butterfly of Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and Delaware.

Lesser Purple Emperor Butterfly

The Lesser Purple Emperor, or Apatura ilia, is a species of butterfly native to most of Europe and Asia. It is named for its similarity to the Purple Emperor butterfly.

Morpho Brilliant

Blue Morpho

The Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho Peleides) drinks the juices from rotting fruits for food. Blue Morpho butterflies live in the rainforests of South America, and can be found in Mexico and Central America.The wingspan of the Blue Morpho butterfly ranges from 7.5 cm to 20 cm.The entire Blue Morpho Butterfly lifecycle, from egg to adult is only 115 days. The larvae of Blue Morpho Butterflies are cannibals. The caterpillar blue morpho butterfly is red-brown with patches of bright green. The brilliant blue color in the butterfly's wings is caused by the diffraction of the light from millions of tiny scales on its wings. It uses this to frighten away predators, by flashing its wings rapidly. The Blue Morpho Butterflies stick together in groups to deter their predators. A form of Mobbing behavior.

There are over 80 different species of the Morpho butterfly.

Emerald Swallowtail

The Emerald Swallowtail (Papilio palinurus) is a butterfly found primarily in South East Asia. It is also referred to as Emerald Peacock or Green-banded Peacock Swallowtail

Pipevine Swallowtail

The Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly (Battus philenor) is a swallowtail butterfly which is found in North and Central America.

The butterfly ranges from southern Canada southwards across USA to Mexico, Tres Marias islands and onto Guatemala and Costa Rica.

In the United States, the butterfly is found in New England down to Florida, from Southern Ontario (Canada) to Nebraska, Texas, Arizona, California, Oregon and New Mexico.

The upper surface of the hind wings of the male butterfly has an iridescent metallic blue sheen. The hindwings also have a series of pale, arrow-head markings above and a single row of seven round orange spots, which never touch, set in an iridescent blue field below.

The forewings are dull blackish-brown.

After mating, females lay batches of eggs on the underside of the leaves of a host plant. The caterpillars feed in small groups when young, but become solitary when older. Chrysalis overwinters.

Java Butterfly (Elymnias Hypermnestra)

The Common Palmfly, Elymnias hypermnestra, is a species of satyrid butterfly found in south Asia.

As some other species in the genus Elymnias, the Common Palmfly presents a precostal cell on the hindwings and a hair tuft of androconial scales on dorsal discal cell of hindwings. This butterfly species is dimorphic, males and females do not look alike. Males exhibit black colored upperside forewings with small blue patches and reddish brown color on upperside hindwings, while the females mimic butterfly species of the genus Danaus.

Race caudata (Western Ghats) Males and female resembles E. undularis, Drury, but both sexes have the wings longer, proportionately to their breadth, and the tail at apex of vein 4 on the hind wing longer. Upperside: male differs from E. undularis as follows :— the subterminal and preapical spots on the fore wing white suffused slightly with dark scales; the terminal half of the hind wing tawny, more or less suffused with dusky black, which in some specimens forms a distinct border along the termen. Female similar to the female of E. undularis, but the black more extended ; veins 2, 3, and 4 on the hind wing broadly bordered with black. Underside: Female differs from E. undularis in the more conspicuous broadly triangular white pre-apical patch on the fore wing, and in the prominence of the broad tawny terminal half of the upperside of the hind wing, which shows through a pale, sometimes pinkish-brown on the underside. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen brown, paler beneath and much paler in the female than in the male.

Race undularis (Subhimalayas and Southeast Asia) Male upperside blackish brown. fore wing with a subterminal series of blue or sometimes slightly green elongate spots, curving strongly inwards and getting more elongate opposite apex, forming almost an oblique bar up to the costa. Hind wing: the terminal margin broadly bright chestnut, sometimes with a subterminal paler spot in two or more of the interspaces. Underside pale brown, the basal two-thirds of both fore and hind wing densely, the outer third more sparsely covered with dark ferruginous, somewhat broad, transverse striae. Fore wing with a broadly triangular pale purplish-white preapical mark; both fore and hind wings with a broad subterminal area purplish white. Hind wing with a small white spot opposite middle of the costa and a more or less complete series of more obscure whitish subterminal spots. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen brown; abdomen beneath paler.

Female Upperside tawny, veins black. Fore wing : the dorsal margin broadly black; the apical area beyond a line curving from the tornus, round apex of the cell and a little beyond it, to the base of the costa also black, the wing crossed preapically by a conspicuous, broad, oblique white bar, and three subterminal white spots. Hind wing: dorsal margin dusky; terminal broadly, costal margin more narrowly black ; a subterminal series of four white spots. Underside tawny, with markings similar to those in the male; the pale whitish markings more extensive ; the dorsal margin broadly without striae.

Race fraterna, Butler (Sri Lanka) is an insular representative of E. undularis. The male differs on the upperside in the more or less complete absence of the subterminal and preapical blue markings on the fore wing; and in the broad terminal border of the hind wing being of a much brighter, almost ochraceous chestnut. On the underside the pale markings are somewhat restricted. The male very closely resembles, both on the upper and under side, the male of E. undularis.

Common Blue Butterfly

Blue Morpho Butterfly, Costa Rica

A Blue Morpho butterfly rests on a leaf at a Butterfly Garden in Guacima de Alajuela, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of San Jose May 12, 2005. More than 30,000 cocoons of butterflies of 30 different species are exported every month from Costa Rica by U.S. citizen Joris Brinkerhoff who specializes in the breeding and exporting butterflies to Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the U.S.

Peleides Blue Morpho (Morpho Peleides)

The Peleides Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides) is an iridescent tropical butterfly found in Mexico, Central America, northern South America,Paraguay and Trinidad. The Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho Peleides) drinks the juices from rotting fruits for food.

Blue Morpho butterflies live in the rainforests of South America, and can be found in Mexico and Central America. The wingspan of the Blue Morpho butterfly ranges from 7.5 cm to 20 cm. The entire Blue Morpho Butterfly lifecycle, from egg to adult is only 115 days. The larvae of Blue Morpho Butterflies are cannibals. The caterpillar blue morpho butterfly is red-brown with patches of bright green.

The brilliant blue colour in the butterfly's wings is caused by the diffraction of the light from millions of tiny scales on its wings. It uses this to frighten away predators, by flashing its wings rapidly. The Blue Morpho Butterflies stick together in groups to deter their predators. A form of Mobbing behavior. There are over 80 different species of the Morpho butterfly.

Lesser Grass Blue Butterfly

The Lesser Grass Blue, Zizina otis, is a species of blue butterfly found in south Asia.

Male upperside: pale violet-blue, with a silvery sheen in certain lights, jfore wing: a broad brown edging along the termen, which covere in some specimens quite the outer fourth of the mug, while in others is much narrower. In all specimens it is broadest at apex and is bounded by an anticiliary darker line, beyond which the cilia are brownish at base and white outwardly. Hind wing: anterior or costal third to half and apex brown; a slender black anticiliary line, bevond which the cilia are as in the fore wing. Underside: brownish grey. Fore wing: a short, transverse, dusky lunule on the discocellulars and a transverse, anteriorly curved, discal series of seven minute black spots, all the spots more or less rounded, the posterior two geminate, the discocellular lunule and each discal spot conspicuously encircled with white; the terminal markings beyond the above consist of an inner and an outer transverse subterminal series of dusky spots, each spot edged on the inner side very obscurely with dusky white, the inner line of spots lunular, the outer with the spots more or less rounded. Cilia dusky. Hind wing : a transverse, curved, subbasal series of four spots and an irregular transverse discal series of nine small spots black, each spot encircled narrowly witli white. Of the discal spots the posterior four are placed in an outwardly oblique, slightly curved line, the middle two spots geminate; the three spots above these are placed in an oblique transverse line further outwards ; lastly, the anterior two spots are posited one over the other and shifted well inwards, just above the apex of the cell; discocellular lunule and terminal markings as on the fore wing, but the inner subterminal lunular line in the latter broader and more prominent. Cilia dusky. Antenna black, shafts ringed with white; head, thorax and abdomen brown, with a little blue scaling; beneath: white.

Female. Upperside: brown, with a more or less distinct suffusion of violet-blue at the bases of the wings, on the hind wing continued obscurely along the dorsum; both foreand hind wings with slender anticiliary lines, darker than the ground-colour. Underside: ground-colour slightly darker than in the male, markings precisely similar. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen as in the male, but the thorax and abdomen above without any blue scaling.

Rare Blue Butterfly

Adonis Blue

The Adonis Blue is mostly found in southern England. One of Britain's rarest butterflies has returned to a spot where it has not been seen for more than 40 years. The Adonis Blue, classified as a priority species, is usually only found at a few places in southern England.

But it has returned in numbers to a former site in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, after a National Trust campaign to restore its habitat. The insect's numbers were decimated 50 years ago when a lot of its natural habitat, chalk grassland, was lost.

The Adonis Blue likes to live in habitats with short grass, and it is unusual for the butterflies to fly far from their home base. When the rabbit-killing disease Myxomatosis broke out in the 1950s, the lack of rabbits meant grass grew too long and the Adonis Blue's former habitats became unsuitable.

But now large numbers of the species have moved back to its former home around Rodborough and Minchinhampton Common, as trust officers have brought in cattle to keep the grass down. Matthew Oakes, butterfly expert and adviser for the National Trust said: "Never underestimate a butterfly.

"We think that the Adonis Blue may be benefiting from milder winters and hotter summers and that it should produce a bumper brood this August and September. "It is one of our loveliest butterflies and we are delighted to have it back in the Cotswolds."

Hybrid Blue Butterfly Species - Alpine Lycaeides

Bacteria Make Female Butterflies Promiscuous, Scientists Say

A germ that kills males triggers a vicious cycle of increasing female promiscuity and male sexual exhaustion in a species of butterfly, scientists report.

Male-killing bacteria known as Wolbachia are extremely widespread in insects, found in more than one-fifth of species. The germs can turn males to females and cause infected females to reproduce without males.
Scientists had assumed these bacteria would profoundly alter the natural mating patterns of their hosts, but only had scant evidence of what these changes would entail in the wild.

Evolutionary biologist Sylvain Charlat at University College London and his colleagues investigated the common eggfly Hypolimnas bolina. This butterfly is found in locations ranging from Madagascar to Asia, and from Australia and to Easter Island.

The bacteria infects Pacific Island and Southeast Asian populations of the butterfly [image], getting transmitted from mother to son and killing males before eggs hatch. Each island's butterflies are affected by Wolbachia differently, leading to different ratios of males to females. The male population can range as low as one male to every 100 females in some areas.

Over the course of three years, the scientists inspected the butterflies’ sex ratio in 20 different locales, including Vietnam, Australia and 18 different islands, including Borneo, New Guinea, Vanuatu and Tahiti. They also investigated female mating frequency and the size of the male sperm package.

Some research sites were easily reachable by airplane, but the scientists relied on private sailboats to get to the more remote spots. While butterflies were common at some locations, they were rare at others, requiring days and days of hiking to find spots for collection. "People were generally very curious about what I was doing, and amused when they knew it was all about sex in butterflies,” Charlat said

The researchers expected that the fewer male butterflies there were, the less sex females likely would have with males. Surprisingly, female promiscuity actually rose.

"Greater numbers of female partners leads to fatigue in males. They start producing smaller sperm packages," Charlat said. "Unfortunately, the female butterflies instinctively know that the packages are smaller and that their chances of having been sufficiently impregnated after mating are lower than usual. This just makes them more rampant."

The actual mechanism behind how the females detect sperm package size remains a mystery so far.

The fact that the Wolbachia bacteria are widespread in insects could mean, Charlat speculated, that this phenomenon might also be widespread in insects in nature.

European Peacock

The European Peacock (Inachis io), more commonly known simply as the Peacock, is a well-known colourful butterfly, found in temperate Europe and Asia. It is the only member of the genus Inachis which is sometimes included in Nymphalis. It should not be confused or classified with the "American peacocks" in the genus Anartia; these are not close relatives of the present species. The peacock butterfly is resident in much of its range, often wintering in buildings or trees. It therefore often appears quite early in spring.

The butterfly measures about 5 cm (2 in) from wingtip to wingtip and is easily identified by its striking eye pattern on a ruddy background, although with wings closed the cryptically coloured dark underwings make it look like a dead leaf. The eyespots are reminiscent of those on the feathers of a peacock, hence the name. The eyespots are exposed when the butterfly is disturbed by a potential predator (such as a bird) in a startling anti-predator display. The butterflies flick their wings open and make a hissing noise. The open wings create an impression of the face of a mammal such as a cat, and this deters the predator for long enough for the butterfly to escape.(Stevens 2005)

The butterfly hibernates over winter before laying its eggs in early spring, in batches of up to 500 at a time. The caterpillars, which are shiny black with six rows of barbed spikes and a series of white dots on each segment, hatch after about a week and feed on nettles and hops. The adult butterflies drink nectar from a wide variety of flowering plants, including buddleia, sallows, dandelions, wild marjoram, danewort, hemp agrimony, and clover; they also utilize tree sap and rotten fruit.

The Peacock can be found in woods, fields, meadows, pastures, parks, and gardens, and from lowlands up to 8,200 feet elevation. It is a relatively common butterfly seen in many European parks and gardens.

White Peacock Butterfly

White Peacock Butterfly (Anartia jatrophae) are very common in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as southern Texas and Florida. Small numbers can also be found in North Carolina, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas.

White peacock butterflies are commonly found in warm, open, weedy areas such as fields or parks where water is abundant -usually in the form of a pond or stream. Adult butterflies are often seen along roadside ditches where host plants are abundant.

Males display a unique territorial behavior. Males stake out a territory, typically 15 meters in diameter, that contains larval host plants. Males perch in this area and aggressively protect it from other insects and other male white peacocks.

Papillons Hamel

Painted Lady (Vanessa Cardui)

Butterfly Gardens

A successful butterfly garden has plants that meet butterfly's needs during all four life stages, the egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult.

You can attract butterflies to your garden by providing them with food (plants and flowers), water, shelter, and places to lay their eggs (host plants). Butterflies drink nectar, so growing nectar-rich flowers will attract butterflies to your garden. Also, when their eggs hatch, the caterpillars eat the foliage of the plant they were laid on, so growing the right type of plants to feed caterpillars is important, since it will allow female butterflies to lay their eggs in your garden.

Owl Butterfly _ Cailigo memnon