Butterfly’s life cycle
Kumar G
II Year BSc, CBZ-A section
GFGC Tumkur, kuumarkicha8469@gmail.com
Introduction
Butterflies are insects but large scaly Wings set them apart. These wings allow them to fly but only when their body temperature is above 86 degrees.The fastest butterflies can fly upto 30 miles per hour. Scientists estimate that there are 28,000 species of butterflies throughout the world. Most butterflies are found in tropical rainforests but they can live in all climates and altitudes of the world. Butterflies migrate to avoid cold weather. Butterflies have three body parts like all other insects. The Head,Thorax and Abdomen. Butterfly four wings and six legs are attached to thorax.
Butterfly life cycle /Butterfly metamorphosis
Let's explore a Butterfly life cycle in detail. Including all four stages of life. All butterfly have "completed metamorphosis ".To grow into an adult they go through 4 stages :-Egg, larvae, pupa and adult.
The First Stage: The Egg
A butterfly starts life as a very small, round, oval or cylindrical egg. The coolest thing about butterfly eggs, especially monarch butterfly eggs, is that if you look close enough you can actually see the tiny caterpillar growing inside of it. Some butterfly eggs may be round, some oval and some may be ribbed while others may have other features. The egg shape depends on the type of butterfly that laid the egg.
The Second Stage: The Larva (Caterpillar)
When the egg finally hatches, most of you would expect for a butterfly to emerge, right? Well, not exactly. In the butterfly’s life cycle, there are four stages and this is only the second stage. Butterfly larvae are actually what we call caterpillars. Caterpillars do not stay in this stage for very long and mostly, in this stage all they do is eat.
When the egg hatches, the caterpillar will start his work and eat the leaf they were born onto. This is really important because the mother butterfly needs to lay her eggs on the type of leaf the caterpillar will eat – each caterpillar type likes only certain types of leaves. Since they are tiny and can not travel to a new plant, the caterpillar needs to hatch on the kind of leaf it wants to eat.
The Third Stage: Pupa (Chrysalis)
The pupa stage is one of the coolest stages of a butterfly’s life. As soon as a caterpillar is done growing and they have reached their full length/weight, they form themselves into a pupa, also known as a chrysalis. From the outside of the pupa, it looks as if the caterpillar may just be resting, but the inside is where all of the action is. Inside of the pupa, the caterpillar is rapidly changing.
People know, caterpillars are short, stubby and have no wings at all. Within the chrysalis the old body parts of the caterpillar are undergoing a remarkable transformation, called ‘metamorphosis,’ to become the beautiful parts that make up the butterfly that will emerge. Tissue, limbs and organs of a caterpillar have all been changed by the time the pupa is finished, and is now ready for the final stage of a butterfly’s life cycle.
The Fourth Stage: Adult Butterfly
Finally, when the caterpillar has done all of its forming and changing inside the pupa, if you are lucky, you will get to see an adult butterfly emerge. When the butterfly first emerges from the chrysalis, both of the wings are going to be soft and folded against its body. This is because the butterfly had to fit all its new parts inside of the pupa.
Butterfly Gardening
Butterflies are some of the most beautiful and interesting creature on earth. A butterfly garden is an easy way to see more butterflies and to help them. Since many natural butterfly habitats has been lost to human activities like Building, Homes. Roads, and Farms .It is easy to increase the number and variety of Butterfly in your yard. Butterfly gardening helps to conservation of many species of quickly disappearing butterfly today.
Importance of Butterfly
Aesthetic value: Butterflies are part of our natural heritage and have been studied for over 300.
Butterflies are used by advertisers and illustrators the world over as way of indicating that something is environmentally.
Ecosystem Value: Butterflies are indicators of a healthy environment and healthy ecosystems.
They indicate a wide range of other invertebrates, which comprise over two-thirds of all species.
Areas rich in butterflies and moths are rich in other invertebrates. These collectively provide a wide range of environmental benefits, including pollination and natural pest control. Moths and butterflies are an important element of the food chain and are prey for birds, bats and other insectivorous animals (for example, in Britain and Ireland, Blue Tits eat an estimated 50 billion moth caterpillars each year). Butterflies support a range of other predators and parasites, many of which are specific to individual species, or groups of species. Butterflies have been widely used by ecologists as model organisms to study the impact of habitat loss and fragmentation, and climate change.
Educational Value: Butterflies and moths have fascinating life-cycles that are used in many countries to teach children about the natural world. The transformation from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis is one of the wonders of nature.
Other educational aspects include the intricate wing patterns and iridescence, and as examples of insect migration.
Economic value: Every butterfly and moth has developed its own suite of chemicals to deter predators and parasites, find a mate, and overcome the chemical defenses of its host plant. Each of these chemicals has a potential value and could be exploited economically.
Scientific value: Butterflies (and moths to a lesser extent) are an extremely important group of ‘model’ organisms used, for centuries, to investigate many areas of biological research, including such diverse fields as navigation, pest control, embryology, mimicry, evolution, genetics, population dynamics and biodiversity conservation.