Like those of Monarch butterflies, the larvae of Queen butterflies feed on various species of poisonous milkweeds. The larvae accumulate the milkweed toxins, and as a result both they and the adult butterflies are quite poisonous.
If you want Queens in your garden, we recommend planting mistflower. The bloom of the mistflower contains a special alkaloid that male Queens ingest, sequester, and later release as an aphrodisiac to attract females. Queen butterfly wings open.
A monarch egg is white or off-white. It's ovoid in shape, and if you look very closely with a magnifying glass, you'll see vertical ridges along the sides. As the tiny larva inside develops, the egg will darken slightly in color before hatching in about 3 – 5 days.
The Queen is solid, the Monarch has varied coloration. In the caterpillar stage, the most obvious difference is that Queens have three sets of tentacles, while Monarchs have two sets. Notice in the photos below, the Queen has what appear to be THREE sets of protuberances. The Monarch caterpillar only has TWO.
Queen egg. Queen females deposit eggs on the stems and near the blooms of rush and other milkweeds.
The queen is chiefly a tropical species. In the US, it is usually confined to the southern portion of the country. It can be found regularly in peninsular Florida and southern Georgia, as well as in the southern portions of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
A quick and easy method to euthanize butterfly eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, and adults is simply to place them in the freezer overnight. Within a couple of minutes, they are normally already dead. They can be placed in a paper or plastic bag, sealed shut, and laid in the freezer.
No butterflies are so poisonous that they kill people or large animals, but there is an African moth whose caterpillar's fluids are very poisonous.
Do the butterflies die after they lay their eggs? They die when they get “old,” just like people do. In many cases, females still have eggs in their bodies when they die, so they don't always get a chance to lay all of their eggs.
The shortest butterfly life spans are found among the Coppers and Small Blues butterflies which live in their adult state for only a few days!
What is the lifespan of butterflies?
In the wild, most butterflies lives are shorter than this because of the dangers provided by predators, disease, and large objects, such as automobiles. The smallest butterflies may live only a week or so, while a few butterflies, such as Monarchs, Mourning Cloaks and tropical heliconians, can live up to nine months.
They sleep. Butterflies are active during the day, so at night they find a hiding place and go to sleep. In the same way, moths are active at night and during the day moths hide and rest. Animals that sleep during the night, like most butterflies, are diurnal.
Egg. Eggs are laid on plants by the adult female butterfly. These plants will then become the food for the hatching caterpillars. Eggs can be laid from spring, summer or fall.
For many years it was thought that when butterflies chase other males, this is a form of contest behaviour over territory. Contest behaviour has been studied in wildlife for many years. When animals compete, it is usually over limited resources such as mates, territory or food.
A butterfly's wings are covered in scales, which are shed over time as part of the insect's life cycle, Reetz said. For some butterflies, the scales can come off if you touch the wings, which can cause some damage but won't kill the butterfly. Touching monarchs' wings does not cause them to lose scales.
The Western monarch population, which lives west of the Rocky Mountains, stood in the millions in the 1980s. In 2017, an annual count found 200,000 butterflies. In 2018, the tally fell to about 30,000 — a figure that held steady last year, said Elizabeth Crone, a biology professor at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.
Because of the lack of food for predators and parasitoids, their numbers will decline the following year. This creates a safer environment for butterflies the following year, often resulting in butterfly population numbers climbing again.
The count in 2017 showed the population reached a historic low of fewer than 29,000 butterflies — down from 1.2 million two decades previously, and falling below the predicted extinction threshold. The population failed to rebound in 2019, maintaining just 29,000 individual butterflies.
One fascinating fact about the Monarch butterfly is that it is poisonous. Not to humans, but to predators such as frogs, grasshoppers, lizards, mice and birds. The Monarch absorbs and stores poison in its body when it is a caterpillar and eats the poisonous milkweed plant.
A week after Thanksgiving, with more than half of monitored overwintering sites — including all the largest ones — reporting their numbers, the 2020 count is below 2,000 butterflies.
We anticipate a final total of less than 2,000 monarchs overwintering in California this year. This is a significant decline from the low numbers of the last two years where the total hovered just under 30,000 monarchs.
Summary: Western butterfly populations are declining at an estimated rate of 1.6% per year, according to a new report. The report looks at more than 450 butterfly species, including the western monarch, whose latest population count revealed a 99.9% decline since the 1980s.
Viceroy butterflies look exactly like monarchs to the untrained observer. Viceroys "mimic" monarchs in appearance. This is a strategy to avoid predation. As you know, monarch caterpillars eat milkweed.
Only caterpillars that eat milkweed can get OE. In the US, those are only Monarch, Queen, and Soldier butterflies. No other species in the US can become infected with OE.
Males have a small black spot on the top surface of the hindwing. Females do not. You can see the spot when the wings are open; sometimes it's faintly visible when the wings are closed, too. Males also have slightly thinner wing veins.
Successful migrating monarchs will live between 6 to 9 months and reproduce and die in the southern U.S. in the spring. Their offspring then carry on their migration north. Therefore, individual monarchs do not make it back to their original starting place.
Ecologists have long preached that Viceroys have enjoyed a Batesian “Get-out-of-Jail-Free” card due to their resemblance to the toxic Monarch butterfly. Monarchs are poisonous because their caterpillar host plant, milkweed, contains harmful cardiac glycosides (Batesian mimicry—the harmless imitating the harmful).
Viceroys are smaller than monarchs, although this size difference may be difficult to see in the field. Comparing wingspans: Viceroy: 2 1/2 - 3 3/8 inches (6.3 - 8.6 cm). Monarch: 3 3/8 - 4 7/8 inches (8.6 - 12.4 cm).
Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches. Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.
