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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Spring brings all the bugs to the garden.

I do enjoy when Spring starts to bring the butterflies back to the gardens!DSCN0717 This gem of a butterfly is the glorious Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) butterfly hanging from a blossom of lavendula.

In colder weather the butterfly gardens are fairly limited in the number of species available for viewing as only the hardiest of butterflies survives or is active in cold weather. Now that the weather has become more temperate we are starting to have some of our overwintering butterfly species emerge from chrysalis.

Many of these species have spent the winter in diapause. Some butterflies in various stages of development utilize diapause to overwinter. Diapause is a state of dormancy in which all development is suspended. Unlike hibernation where development and metabolism still occur at a slower rate, during diapause all cellular growth stops causing complete dormancy.

DSCN0648 In recent days we have seen a number of Giant Swallowtails, Polydamas Swallowtails and Zebra Swallowtails emerge from chrysalis in the butterfly garden lab. Also, some swallowtail species have been seen on the wing in the outside garden including the Eastern Black Swallowtail. Yes, Spring is in the air and so are the butterflies!

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3 comments:

  1. ShelleyMarch 18, 2010 at 6:15 PM

    I have a question.

    I'm in North Florida - just south of Tallahassee. We had many hard freezes this winter. Is the butterfly population going to be seriously hurt by this?

    Thanks,
    Shelley

    ReplyDelete
  2. KristenMarch 19, 2010 at 7:53 AM

    I think it may be a while before we know for sure and there are still a lot of factors that can contribute to a smaller or larger population.

    A lot of host and nectar plants were killed back in the freze and it will take longer for them to come back and re-establish before they can be of use to butterflies. This may continue to hurt newly emerged butterflies that did make it through the harsh winter as they won't have nectar to sustain themselves or host plants to lay eggs on.


    The monarch population overwintering in Mexico was severly damaged by freak winter storms that caused mudslides, hail, flooding and torrential downpours in the butterfly preserve areas. That population may have been reduced by 50%. So you will likely see fewer monarchs returning this year.

    However, I think it may just be too early to call it for the other butterfly species but I am still hopeful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 19, 2010 at 5:47 PM

    Thanks for the answer. Guess we are playing a waiting game.

    ReplyDelete

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