The living habits of butterflies

Butterflies are generally colorful, with many stripes and rich colors, and there are all kinds of flower spots on their wings and body. the largest butterfly can spread its wings up to about 28cm and 30cm, and the smallest butterfly is only about 0.7cm. The number is the largest in the Amazon River Basin in South America, followed by Southeast Asia. Let's take a look at the life habits of butterflies.

The activity law of butterflies

From the perspective of the regularity of activity, the first instar larvae of many social species have the same feeding and perching activities (Ⅰ and Ⅱ instar are relatively obvious). They feed or inhabit together, such as the Chinese tiger Phoenix butterfly. What's more, the larvae of some butterflies, such as nettle butterflies, often spin silk into disorderly webs among the branches and leaves of nettles in groups, hiding in them like spiders, in order to defend against foreign enemies, and feed and inhabit at the same time, quite regularly. The habitat of butterfly larvae is generally very hidden, so it is not easy to find individual larvae in the wild.

The perching characteristics of butterflies

The larvae of some butterflies often have the habit of seclusion in which leaves are used as nests. The methods of leaf attachment vary from one leaf to several leaves, and each has its own style or skill. Banana butterfly larvae can glue the edges of banana leaves into nests, while rice butterflies often nest with several leaves. Larvae with nesting habits or netting habits feed near their habitat and never go far away. As soon as they are alarmed, they immediately retreat into the nest to hide, which is completely different from the general butterfly habitat.

Mating and reproduction of butterflies

Generally speaking, males of butterflies emerge earlier than females. After that, the male butterfly flies everywhere, looking for the newly emerged female butterfly to chase mating according to the sex pheromone emitted by the female butterfly. Before mating, you need to go through a marriage proposal process, in which the pattern and color of the female butterfly and its pheromones play an important role, in addition, the structure of the external genitalia must match. If a female butterfly perched on a leaf has already mated, when the male butterfly flies temporarily, it will spread its wings and raise its abdomen high and never take off. it is a sign that the female butterfly does not accept mating, so the male butterfly flies around for a while and then flies away. on the contrary, it is mating.

Feeding habits of butterflies

1. Larvae: the feeding objects of butterfly larvae vary from species to species. most larvae are addicted to leaves, some species, such as pollen butterflies and orange pink butterflies, and some species eat young pods or young fruits. For example, pod gray butterfly eats tender pods, gardenia gray butterfly eats young gardenia fruit. In addition, in the gray butterfly family, a few species of larvae are carnivorous, for example, scale gray butterfly is addicted to coffee scale, bamboo aphid gray butterfly feeds exclusively on bamboo aphid, this carnivorous species is a rare beneficial insect in butterflies.

2. Adults: most butterflies suck nectar. For those that suck nectar, they not only suck nectar, but also like to suck the nectar of certain plants, such as blue Phoenix butterflies sucking nectar of Liliaceae plants, cabbage pink butterflies suck nectar of plants of Cross Flower family, leopard butterflies suck nectar of Compositae plants, and so on. Some butterflies that do not suck nectar have bamboo eye butterflies that suck fig juice. Lilac butterflies feed on the sour pulp of diseased oak and poplar, and some butterflies suck the flesh of grapes, which are common in grape fields.