Nick Baker's Bug Book by Nick Baker

Author:Nick Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472922090
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The silken web provides some protection from larger predators.

Female Tortoiseshell laying eggs onto a fresh succulent shoot, an ideal meal for her brood.

Freshly hatched larvae gather in clots beneath the web where they feed furiously on the succulent leaf tips.

Pregnant females search the nettle bed for areas free of caterpillars that could compete with a potential brood.

The chrysalis hangs in the shade for 2-3 weeks before the adult emerges.

More mature larvae have left the security of the web. They forage singly and rely on wriggling and dropping from the leaf to escape larger predators.

Wings – not just for flying

A butterfly’s wings are survival devices and do much more than propel the insect through the air...

Solar panels

Wings are used like radiators. Butterflies need to get their body temperature up to around 30°C to be active. Held open, wings can be used as solar panels, to warm the blood and take it back to the insect’s body. This is the familiar basking pose adopted by many butterflies when the air temperature is cool, during the early morning hours.

Team colours

The bright patterns of the day-flying butterflies and moths act as signals to others of the same species, which is particularly useful when trying to find a mate.

The colours and patterns of most moths help them hide during the daylight hours. Bright wing colours also act as a warning. In most species sombre colours on the other side of the wing can hide these flash markings.

Attack deflectors

Eye-spots, such as those seen in the Peacock Butterfly, can deflect an attack. If you study a population of Meadow Browns or Gatekeepers you may notice that a lot of them have triangular bits of their wings missing. These are places where birds have aimed at spots on the wings, and just a bit of wing has broken away allowing the butterfly to fly another day.

This is taken to the extreme in the Blue and Hairstreak butterflies. The undersides of their wings also have an eyespot at the corner of the rearwing, and some species have another blotch of colour and a tail, which looks just like a second head with antennae. Predators lunge for the dummy head instead of the real one – the butterfly could end up losing a bit of its wing, but at least it has not lost its head!

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