Singing Butterfly: BUTTERFLY'S

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This is the most beautiful butterfly. Blue is my favorite color. I was just reading about butterfly's on Wikipedia.com. So I decide to share a little of what I learned and found interesting.

Butterfly's are a member of the Lepidoptera order. Lepidoptera pronounced (lep-i-dop-ter-uh), is derived from Ancient Greek meaning (scale) and (wing). (Reference.com) A person who studies or collects butterfly's is called a Lepidopterist. Moth's are also apart of Lepdoptera order. Together Moth's and Butterfly's make up 180,000 different species. In the Lepidoptera order insects go through complete metamorphosis, a four-stage life cycle: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and adult.

During the life cycle diapause can sometimes take place. Diapause is kind of like hibernation. Only hibernation is a natural part of life, where as diapause is a state induced by extreme circumstances or unfavorable conditions. Diapaus means to slow the metabolic activity down to a dormant point that would appear that the butterfly is in hibernation. Unlike hibernation, diapause does not end at a designated time but actually has to be released by a certain stimuli. This means that if the weather conditions are so terrible that it would be hard to survive, the butterfly may shut down until things change. Even if the surrounding atmosphere is ideal though it still has to wait for the proper stimuli to free it. This is a wonderful survival technique. Butterfly's also have a reproductive diapause.

Reproductive diapause has basically the same principles. The butterfly will continue to be active and go about daily routines but the reproductive tissue will pause and cease to function until the right stimuli wakes it up again. This is very common in the Monarch Butterfly.

The Monarch Butterfly is very impressive and widely known for it's annual migration patterns. This migration being the reason this butterfly is also known as the wanderer butterfly. The Monarch Butterfly is found in North America, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and many other parts of the world. Reproductive diapause is what makes this amazing migration possible. The life span of the Monarch is less than two months but the last generation of the summer are the ones that experience the reproductive diapause. When the Monarch enters into this diapause stage of the reproductive organ it can live up to seven months or more. That is impressive.

Butterfly's are beautiful insects. I hope you have enjoyed this little piece of interesting fact about Butterfly's.

By: Singing Butterfly

American Psychological Association (APA):

Lepidoptera. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved August 01, 2008, from Reference.com website: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Lepidoptera