Tag Archives: Falcate orangetip

Transformation

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We delight in the beauty of a butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

~Maya Angelou

Remember how excited I was to finally photograph a chrysalis of a Falcate Orangetip butterfly in that post a few days ago? Well, I kept watch on the remaining caterpillars, hoping to catch one in the act of transformation, and got lucky again. One morning when I checked on the larvae, I found one in its prepupa stage. That is the stage between a free-living caterpillar and its pupa (chrysalis). A butterfly larva usually finds a sheltered spot and attaches itself to a twig or leaf (or whatever it usually forms its chrysalis on) with silk. In many groups, the prepupa hangs down below something (like a monarch in its J-shaped prepupa). For this species (and swallowtails), it attaches itself at the rear end with silk and then forms a loop of silk that it slips its head through. The position reminds me of a telephone line worker attached to a pole with a safety harness. The prepupa stage usually lasts about 24 hours for the species I have observed, so I set up a photo chamber with the prepupa in it, and waited.

photo chamber

My dining room macro studio with light box, LED light for video, camera and flash for stills (click photos to enlarge)

By the way, I want to thank Sam Jaffe of The Caterpillar Lab for his suggestion of the Folio brand portable light box as a tool for photographing insects. It has its own LED light strips and changeable background colors. And it looks good on a dining room table in times when no one can come to dinner.

The prepupa had formed during the night, so I anticipated it would be the next morning before it transformed. The first one managed to transform during the early morning hours before even I get up. This one was more obliging, and the next morning was still a prepupa, but starting to move slightly. I got some coffee and waited…for the next 30 minutes or so it just made slight wriggles. Then the C-shape started to straighten out, and I knew, from watching swallowtail prepupa do this, that things were about to happen. The video clip below shortens what took about 15 minutes to occur into 1 minute. The footage is at 5X the actual speed and I edited out clips to shorten it. I’ll let this amazing act speak for itself…

Success

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To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

~Mary Oliver

twig with chrysalis

This is what I am very excited about (read on) (click photos to enlarge)

I imagine many of you already suspect me to be, shall we say, a nature nerd. This post probably will prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. You may recall a post a few weeks back where I photographed a pair of one of my favorite spring butterflies, the Falcate Orangetip, doing some courtship flights, and, later, finding where a female had laid eggs.

Falcate orangetip butterflies mating behavior 1

Courting pair of Falcate Orangetip butterflies from late March

I mentioned I have always wanted to find and photograph one of their unusual chrsyalids, but, in spite of searching for them near some of their host plants (the wild version is Cutleaf Toothwort) on our property most springs, I had yet to succeed. So, when I found a female laying eggs back in March, I dutifully collected a couple of their weedy version of host plant (Hairy Bittercress) containing eggs, potted up the plants, and brought them inside to observe. Finally, on March 30, the first of what I thought were two collected eggs, hatched. Here is that post. What I learned over the next few weeks is that these guys are very slow eaters, and that the bittercress starts to dry up in the pots and yard before the caterpillars seemingly have time to complete their cycle.

Falcate Orange-tip caterpillar late stages on white background

Falcate Orangetip caterpillar, two weeks after hatching

So, I started collecting bittercress plants from the yard and putting them in floral tubes with water as a food source for what I soon discovered were five larvae. The two eggs I had originally collected hatched first, but there were some unseen eggs that hatched later, perhaps on plants I brought in as food.

Falcate Orange-tip caterpillar late stages

They fed for another two weeks and then…

The two large larvae kept feeding and growing and I was worried I would run out of decent bittercress plants as a food source. Then, on April 29, I checked the plants and found one of the large larvae had formed a prepupa (the stage between a caterpillar and a chrysalis). It was in a pose similar to a swallowtail prepupa, with the rear attached to a silk pad, the front of the caterpillar passing through another silk loop, and the whole body curled in a C-shape (or maybe more like an apostrophe)..

Falcate Orange-tip prepupa

On April 29, I found one caterpillar had made a prepupa

Over my years of raising caterpillars for programs, I have witnessed many prepupa transform to the chrysalis (it is really magical to watch). The prepupa stage usually lasts about 24 hours, so I Imagined it would transform overnight or early the next morning. I photographed it and left it sitting out on our dining room table/macro studio, hoping to catch it in the act of transforming. I checked on it once in the middle of the night, but it was still in the same position. Close to the time they shed the last caterpillar skin to reveal the newly formed chrysalis underneath, the prepupa starts to shudder and then straighten out. Then it happens quickly, usually within a matter of minutes. As it turned out, this prepupa decided to complete its performance sometime in the wee hours of the morning, so when I awoke and checked on it about 7 a.m., the chrysalis was already there.

Falcate Orange-tip chrysalis

When I woke up the next morning, success!

But, I had finally succeeded in seeing one of their strange thorn-mimic chrysalids. No wonder I have never found one. Look at the first photo in this blog again and you can see how well this chrysalis blends in to a tree trunk or twig, the usual places in the forest where it is formed.

Falcate OrangeTip chrysalis with pencil eraser for scale

The chrysalis with a pencil eraser for scale

Plus, it is a pretty small, cryptically-colored chrysalis, making it even more challenging. Needless to say, I was geeking out when Melissa came into the dining room (the things she puts up with…although she thought it was pretty cool as well). With a few larvae still feeding, I might have a shot at witnessing the transformation, I’ll keep checking and building my nerd street cred.

The End Result of Butterfly Courtship

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Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous.

~Michael Mikalko

Last week I did a post on the courtship behavior and egg-laying by Falcate Orangetip butterflies in our yard. I watched a female lay two eggs on two different plants of Hairy Bittercress, a common yard weed in the mustard family.

Falcate orangetip egg

Falcate Orangetip egg laid on March 20 (click photos to enlarge)

Times being what they are, I figured I would dig up a couple of the plants that had eggs on them and bring them inside to observe. I have never found one of the incredible thorn-mimic chrysalids of this species (they are tiny and apparently really blend into branches and tree trunks), so I thought this might be my chance if I could keep these little guys alive long enough. Most butterfly eggs I have watched hatch in just a few days, so I was getting worried when a week had gone by and nothing had happened. Each morning I pulled the now potted weeds out of the butterfly cage and examined them with a hand lens to see if the egg had hatched. Finally, yesterday morning (March 30)…

hatched egg of falcate orangetip

The remnants of one of the butterfly eggs; the other egg was apparently totally eaten by the larva.

…both eggs had hatched – about 11 days after they were laid! The first plant had about half of the egg shell remaining. When I searched the other plant, there was no egg casing at all. That is pretty typical since many butterfly and moth hatchlings will eat their egg shell right after emerging.

Falcate orangetip larva first instar 2 days old

The tiny first instar larva of a Falcate Orangetip butterfly.

It took some searching with a magnifier to find each of the new larvae. They are only about 2 mm in length and have tiny hairs scattered on their body with what looks like a drop of liquid at the tip of each hair. This may be some sort of predator deterrent. I found both larvae feeding on a developing seed pod of their respective plants. With the month ahead being one of mainly home-bound observations, I’ll keep tabs on these guys and try to provide an occasional update on their progress and changes (because I know you just need to know:).

 

Butterfly Courtship

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My scientific life has been spent describing the interactions that occur when butterflies meet and trying to understand what is going on and why…I persist in following butterflies with stopwatch and notepad.

~Ronald L. Rutowski, North American Butterfly Association

Yesterday’s sunshine (why can’t we seem to have at least two days in a row of that here lately?) brought out the invertebrates in the yard. I looked out the window at one point and saw a fluttering small white butterfly checking out the Hairy Bittercress weeds in the front yard. It was a female Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea), and those weeds, members of the mustard family, are one of her host plants. These tiny butterflies are one of the sure signs of spring as they fly for only a couple of weeks early each year, looking for members of the mustard family on which to lay their eggs.

Hairy bittercress

The distinctive developing seed pods of the common yard weed, Hairy Bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta (click photos to enlarge)

I grabbed my camera and by the time I got outside I saw another butterfly, this one with orange wing tips (a male Falcate Orangetip), pursuing the female. What followed was 3 minutes of intense butterfly behavior (and burst mode shooting on my part). The male’s flight pattern was rapid and erratic and he would dive in and briefly flutter near her before darting off and circling back.

Falcate orangetip butterflies mating behavior 2

Male Falcate Orangetip (with orange wing tips) fluttering near female perched on one of her host plants.

Falcate orangetip butterflies mating behavior

The female maintained an abdomen up position the entire time.

Falcate orangetip butterflies mating behavior 1

It seems as though the male’s efforts were unsuccessful as he eventually flew off and she continued patrolling the yard for bittercress.

I have seen this abdomen up behavior before when watching Falcate Orangetips. I have always assumed it was the response of a female that is not interested in the male’s attention. But, some research on a closely related European species shows that both receptive virgin females and non-receptive, previously mated females, show this raised abdomen behavior when a courting male comes a calling. The difference may lie in what chemical compounds the female is releasing when the male gets close. In one case, it may be an attractant pheromone. In the already mated females, it is believed to be a repellent.

Falcate orangetip egg

A single tiny egg on the flower of the host plant.

After the male departed, I tried following the female around the yard to see if she was going to lay an egg, but she eventually wandered off through the woods. I went back to the original plant I had seen her land on and began to search it for an egg. I finally found one – a tiny sculpted egg, laid at the base of a flower, just where the online references had said it would be. She supposedly deposits a pheromone on the egg that keeps other females from laying an egg on that same plant as the larvae are known to be cannibalistic. Now I want to try keep track of it as the larvae (and especially the thorn-like chrysalis) are extremely hard to find. The things you can do in self-isolation…

For more on the behavior of butterflies and their mating habits, check out this article, When Butterflies Meet, from the North American Butterfly Association.