Great article, Amaranta. The photo essay builds on so many levels and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into this. The more we can each take on a proactive role, the better. We need to emerge from our own anthropocene cocoons and become better citizen scientists.
Excellent article. The loss of butterflies is as great an issue as the loss of birds. It shows how we humans have caused great harm to our ecosystems, our habitats and our Home Earth.
It's me again. The description of the monarch migration is backwards. Yes, they winter in the mountains of central Mexico, but the migration back north is essentially a multi-generational population expansion in which the northward migrating monarchs breed on milkweed over several generations, each generation expanding the total range northward. At the end of the breeding season, the final summer generation makes the full migration back to the mountains of central Mexico. It is an amazing migration, indeed.
There is an interesting theory that the monarch migration is an extreme manifestation of a seasonal altitudinal migration from the high Mexican mountains in winter to the surrounding lowlands in summer. The proposition is that as European settlement cleared vast tract of land for agriculture the population and density of milkweed expanded greatly (most species are weeds, after all), so the expansion of the monarch population to the lowlands just continued northward. By the late 19th century, monarchs were captured even in the UK, and far beyond their present range, but they now seem limited (if you can call that limited) to the current documented range. The interesting angle here is that the current range and migration of the monarch were indirectly created by humans. Is that cool, or what?
Thank you for pointing that out, I’ll be sure to correct that! I’m not from the US myself so hadn’t heard of this amazing migration till recently, I think by using multiple sources to write this I got things a bit muddled up. And yes very interesting theory, I’ll have to look more into that.
Actually, the image of the one butterfly hovering over another as the lower one "dies" is not what I think is going on. It looks to me that the lower butterfly is a female that has acquiesced to copulation, and the hovering male is about to make his move. In several butterfly species, the male dusts the female antennae with a pheromone during courtship, and this (if all goes well) causes the female to alight and allow copulation. Interestingly, there is a second picture of butterflies in copulo. I suppose it's easier to photograph butterflies that are "otherwise engaged."
An addendum to my comment: note that the lower heliconius butterfly (presumably the female) has raised the tip of her abdomen to invite the male to copulate.
Thanks for your comment Walter. I considered this as well but I couldn’t find any other examples of butterflies lying on their back to mate and also remember it not moving after that anyway. If you could point me to any info or images of butterflies lying on their backs to mate I would be very interested!
The lower heliconiid is not on her back. Note that the color markings on her wings are similar to the upper wing surface of the hovering male. Also, if she were on her back, her legs would poke upward, but no legs are visible. Although it is very out of focus, the tip of her abdomen seems to have brown color spots exposed. Possibly part of the invitation to copulate. The pairs stay copulated for days. Here is an interesting article on mating in heliconiids, but nothing about initial positions. https://daily.jstor.org/love-sex-and-cyanide-the-private-life-of-a-toxic-butterfly/. There may be a lot of variation in courtship within this family of butterflied.
Here is a description of courtship in another heliconiid species: "Typical courtship in adult-mating Heliconius begins with a male approaching a perched or flying female. The male chases a flying female, sometimes appearing to touch her, until the male breaks off pursuit or the female lands. Courtship continues with the male hovering over the perched female, possibly to waft pheromones produced by specialized androcondial scales on the wings, towards the female (Darragh et al. 2017). The male will attempt to land next to the female, facing in the same direction, and bend his abdomen towards hers to attempt to begin mating. Less commonly, males may land facing the female and touch her head with their proboscis; the function of this behaviour is unknown. Perched females may execute several behaviours during courtship. They may walk or fly away from the male; hold the wings open, preventing the male’s abdomen from reaching hers; or keep the wings closed, allowing mating to occur. She may also flutter her wings and evert her abdominal scent glands; this may be a rejection behaviour, especially in females who have previously mated. More detailed accounts of Heliconius courtship are given by Crane (1955, 1957), Klein and De Araújo (2010), and Jiggins (2016)." The source is https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6475913/
This is so important! Thank you for this wonderful, important and informative piece.
Thank you so much Pamela :)
Great article, Amaranta. The photo essay builds on so many levels and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into this. The more we can each take on a proactive role, the better. We need to emerge from our own anthropocene cocoons and become better citizen scientists.
Thank you so much Heidi, I love that analogy :)
Excellent article. The loss of butterflies is as great an issue as the loss of birds. It shows how we humans have caused great harm to our ecosystems, our habitats and our Home Earth.
Thank you so much Perry. Very true, thank you for your insights and input into this article 🙌🏼
It's me again. The description of the monarch migration is backwards. Yes, they winter in the mountains of central Mexico, but the migration back north is essentially a multi-generational population expansion in which the northward migrating monarchs breed on milkweed over several generations, each generation expanding the total range northward. At the end of the breeding season, the final summer generation makes the full migration back to the mountains of central Mexico. It is an amazing migration, indeed.
There is an interesting theory that the monarch migration is an extreme manifestation of a seasonal altitudinal migration from the high Mexican mountains in winter to the surrounding lowlands in summer. The proposition is that as European settlement cleared vast tract of land for agriculture the population and density of milkweed expanded greatly (most species are weeds, after all), so the expansion of the monarch population to the lowlands just continued northward. By the late 19th century, monarchs were captured even in the UK, and far beyond their present range, but they now seem limited (if you can call that limited) to the current documented range. The interesting angle here is that the current range and migration of the monarch were indirectly created by humans. Is that cool, or what?
Thank you for pointing that out, I’ll be sure to correct that! I’m not from the US myself so hadn’t heard of this amazing migration till recently, I think by using multiple sources to write this I got things a bit muddled up. And yes very interesting theory, I’ll have to look more into that.
Actually, the image of the one butterfly hovering over another as the lower one "dies" is not what I think is going on. It looks to me that the lower butterfly is a female that has acquiesced to copulation, and the hovering male is about to make his move. In several butterfly species, the male dusts the female antennae with a pheromone during courtship, and this (if all goes well) causes the female to alight and allow copulation. Interestingly, there is a second picture of butterflies in copulo. I suppose it's easier to photograph butterflies that are "otherwise engaged."
An addendum to my comment: note that the lower heliconius butterfly (presumably the female) has raised the tip of her abdomen to invite the male to copulate.
Thanks for your comment Walter. I considered this as well but I couldn’t find any other examples of butterflies lying on their back to mate and also remember it not moving after that anyway. If you could point me to any info or images of butterflies lying on their backs to mate I would be very interested!
The lower heliconiid is not on her back. Note that the color markings on her wings are similar to the upper wing surface of the hovering male. Also, if she were on her back, her legs would poke upward, but no legs are visible. Although it is very out of focus, the tip of her abdomen seems to have brown color spots exposed. Possibly part of the invitation to copulate. The pairs stay copulated for days. Here is an interesting article on mating in heliconiids, but nothing about initial positions. https://daily.jstor.org/love-sex-and-cyanide-the-private-life-of-a-toxic-butterfly/. There may be a lot of variation in courtship within this family of butterflied.
Here is a description of courtship in another heliconiid species: "Typical courtship in adult-mating Heliconius begins with a male approaching a perched or flying female. The male chases a flying female, sometimes appearing to touch her, until the male breaks off pursuit or the female lands. Courtship continues with the male hovering over the perched female, possibly to waft pheromones produced by specialized androcondial scales on the wings, towards the female (Darragh et al. 2017). The male will attempt to land next to the female, facing in the same direction, and bend his abdomen towards hers to attempt to begin mating. Less commonly, males may land facing the female and touch her head with their proboscis; the function of this behaviour is unknown. Perched females may execute several behaviours during courtship. They may walk or fly away from the male; hold the wings open, preventing the male’s abdomen from reaching hers; or keep the wings closed, allowing mating to occur. She may also flutter her wings and evert her abdominal scent glands; this may be a rejection behaviour, especially in females who have previously mated. More detailed accounts of Heliconius courtship are given by Crane (1955, 1957), Klein and De Araújo (2010), and Jiggins (2016)." The source is https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6475913/
Very interesting thank you I look forward to reading these