Wild Neighbors: Matters of Taste
On our way to a Fourth of July block party this afternoon, Ron and I witnessed a mass emergence of gulf fritillaries. Ten or a dozen of them were fluttering around a passionvinecovered fence, getting accustomed to their wings. Some checked out the passionvine flowers, but with minimal interest. One had worked its way a few doors down the street and was filling up at a buddleia. By the time we passed that corner again, a couple of hours later, the butterflies had all dispersed. Gulf fritillariesnot true fritillaries, theyre members of a mostly tropical American familyare obligate pipevine specialists. Adults can nectar wherever they feel like; larvae require pipevine leaves. They sequester the plants toxins, as monarchs do with milkweed.But they do last a long time and those devoted users of the gold filter paper will swear by them. The adults?orange wings are a badge of unpalatability. Originally native to the Gulf Coast, gulf fritillaries followed ornamental pipevine plantings west to California, where they are now one of the most common urban butterflies.
In terms of larval food plants, butterflies and moths run the gamut from narrow specialists to broad generalists sometimes in the same genus or family. Their feeding preferences represent various outcomes of what James Scott The Butterflies of North Americacalled perpetual between insects and plants As plants evolved chemical defenses against leaf eating insects, butterflies and other insects countered with enzymes that detoxify those chemicals,These female sex pills are surely effective if you use them in the required dosage and for the required period of time. and other adaptations. Scott againFew insect species can detoxify or tolerate the numerous plant poisons residing in a great array of plantsand because most insects can detoxify only a few poisons, most eat only a few plantsgenerally plants that are closely related.
The swallowtail family is a case in point. The blue black pipevine swallowtail uses only pipevines, either the native California pipevine or exotic cultivars. Again, the larva acquires a chemical defensearistolochic acid in this casefrom the host plant. Anise swallowtails, patterned in black and yellow, rely on plants in the celeryparsley family that contain essential oils like anisic aldehyde. UC Davis entomologist Arthur Shapiro writes in his Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions that the larvae will eat filter paper if its coated with the proper oil. Formerly, they fed on native plants like yampah, biscuitroot, and water hemlock. But most populations have switched to two exotic species, sweet fennel and poison hemlock. Pierre Lorquin, who collected butterflies in California during the Gold Rush, noted that the swallowtails were already eating fennel. The larvae also have a taste for citrus leaves, but their economic impact has been limited.
A third member of the family, the pale swallowtail, favors coffeeberry and ceanothus. According to Shapiro, females will sometimes lay their eggs on white sweet clover, which somehow smells right. Their offspring wont eat though The western tiger swallowtail is more eclectic in its diet, which includes sycamo, cottonwood willow cherry peach almondprivet lilac and sweet gum. Adult western tigers are regulars in my back yard, and I keep wondering where theyve parked their larvae. Were surrounded by ashes and sweet gums but there arent that many in the immediate block.
Lately been seeing some kind of blue in the yard: Vladimir Nabokovs favorite butterflies, although the species that was named for him is, inevitably, a satyr. This blue flies high and fast, and never sits down. Blues in general prefer plants in the legume family lupine, lotus, vetch, locoweed. Notable exceptions are the western pygmy blue (goosefoot, pickleweed, Russian thistle) and the Sonora blue (dudleyas.) Lupines are not locally common. Maybe the blues larvae are on my neighbors sweet peas.
Some blues, including the Eurasian large blue, have diverged from the typical lepidopteran vegetarian habit. Their larvae,Look for various types of natural Erection pills to get an "upside" view of life instead of looking like a sailing ship in the doldrums. tended by ants as a source of honeydew are sometimes taken into the anthill where they repay their hostesses hospitality by eating the ant grubs. Caterpillars of the harvester, a small black-and-orange eastern butterfly, prey on wooly aphids. And of course there are the notorious killer inchworms of Hawaii, moth larvae that have become ambush predators. Its a strange world.
On our way to a Fourth of July block party this afternoon, Ron and I witnessed a mass emergence of gulf fritillaries. Ten or a dozen of them were fluttering around a passionvinecovered fence, getting accustomed to their wings. Some checked out the passionvine flowers, but with minimal interest. One had worked its way a few doors down the street and was filling up at a buddleia. By the time we passed that corner again, a couple of hours later, the butterflies had all dispersed. Gulf fritillariesnot true fritillaries, theyre members of a mostly tropical American familyare obligate pipevine specialists. Adults can nectar wherever they feel like; larvae require pipevine leaves. They sequester the plants toxins, as monarchs do with milkweed.But they do last a long time and those devoted users of the gold filter paper will swear by them. The adults?orange wings are a badge of unpalatability. Originally native to the Gulf Coast, gulf fritillaries followed ornamental pipevine plantings west to California, where they are now one of the most common urban butterflies.
In terms of larval food plants, butterflies and moths run the gamut from narrow specialists to broad generalists sometimes in the same genus or family. Their feeding preferences represent various outcomes of what James Scott The Butterflies of North Americacalled perpetual between insects and plants As plants evolved chemical defenses against leaf eating insects, butterflies and other insects countered with enzymes that detoxify those chemicals,These female sex pills are surely effective if you use them in the required dosage and for the required period of time. and other adaptations. Scott againFew insect species can detoxify or tolerate the numerous plant poisons residing in a great array of plantsand because most insects can detoxify only a few poisons, most eat only a few plantsgenerally plants that are closely related.
The swallowtail family is a case in point. The blue black pipevine swallowtail uses only pipevines, either the native California pipevine or exotic cultivars. Again, the larva acquires a chemical defensearistolochic acid in this casefrom the host plant. Anise swallowtails, patterned in black and yellow, rely on plants in the celeryparsley family that contain essential oils like anisic aldehyde. UC Davis entomologist Arthur Shapiro writes in his Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions that the larvae will eat filter paper if its coated with the proper oil. Formerly, they fed on native plants like yampah, biscuitroot, and water hemlock. But most populations have switched to two exotic species, sweet fennel and poison hemlock. Pierre Lorquin, who collected butterflies in California during the Gold Rush, noted that the swallowtails were already eating fennel. The larvae also have a taste for citrus leaves, but their economic impact has been limited.
A third member of the family, the pale swallowtail, favors coffeeberry and ceanothus. According to Shapiro, females will sometimes lay their eggs on white sweet clover, which somehow smells right. Their offspring wont eat though The western tiger swallowtail is more eclectic in its diet, which includes sycamo, cottonwood willow cherry peach almondprivet lilac and sweet gum. Adult western tigers are regulars in my back yard, and I keep wondering where theyve parked their larvae. Were surrounded by ashes and sweet gums but there arent that many in the immediate block.
Lately been seeing some kind of blue in the yard: Vladimir Nabokovs favorite butterflies, although the species that was named for him is, inevitably, a satyr. This blue flies high and fast, and never sits down. Blues in general prefer plants in the legume family lupine, lotus, vetch, locoweed. Notable exceptions are the western pygmy blue (goosefoot, pickleweed, Russian thistle) and the Sonora blue (dudleyas.) Lupines are not locally common. Maybe the blues larvae are on my neighbors sweet peas.
Some blues, including the Eurasian large blue, have diverged from the typical lepidopteran vegetarian habit. Their larvae,Look for various types of natural Erection pills to get an "upside" view of life instead of looking like a sailing ship in the doldrums. tended by ants as a source of honeydew are sometimes taken into the anthill where they repay their hostesses hospitality by eating the ant grubs. Caterpillars of the harvester, a small black-and-orange eastern butterfly, prey on wooly aphids. And of course there are the notorious killer inchworms of Hawaii, moth larvae that have become ambush predators. Its a strange world.
没有评论:
发表评论