Getting in to the swing of spring: Gulf Fritillary

The BioWorks Butterfly Garden seems to be fairly unique in that we rear all of our own butterflies for display and only display Florida native species. Our message here is that butterflies are awesome and important and that by making some simple changes to your landscape you can provide these little wonders with more habitat to call home. Because we don't purchase butterflies, our winter crop is very much reflective of what is available in wild butterflies during the same period: not much.


During winter we may have only a few butterflies in the Flight Encounter. Cold weather and butterflies don't really get along. Butterflies are poikilotherms and need warm weather to be active. When spring finally come around, the butterflies come back in droves to take advantage of the amazing climate of the Tampa Bay region. Here are MOSI, our darling insects are on the upswing.


This morning we had our first Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) eclose from its chrysalis. I have a tank brimming with larvae, about a half dozen already in chrysalis and now our first of these lovely butterflies. Don't tell the other species, but I am really overly fond of Gulf Fritillaries. Their wings have spots of silver that are shiny and reflect sunlight. Very hard to capture in a photo and much better to see in real life. This afternoon there will be a few dozen of these wild beauties cruising the gardens and depositing eggs on the passionvine.


The caterpillars are also pretty spectacular. Brilliant orange and black spines warn away predators, but I just find them lovely. Warning colors apparently don't work on keepers.