VIDEO: Great Southern White Ovipositing

Up north, a white winter refers to lots of snow on the ground. But here in Florida, white in winter means butterflies! Several species of butterflies from the sub-family known as Whites (Pierinae) fly in Florida during winter and spring, including Great Southern Whites (Ascia monuste), Florida Whites (Appias drusilla), Checkered Whites (Pontia protodice), and Cabbage Whites (Pieris rapae).

These butterflies are found mostly during spring and summer because that's when their host plants are flourishing. Common Peppergrass (Lepidium virginicum), a native Florida plant often considered a weed, is abundant in Florida this time of year, and wherever it grows, the whites are bound to be busy nearby in huge numbers. Whites also use cultivated crops like cabbage and collards, so their larva are sometimes considered a pest, but our native species like Great Southern Whites prefer peppergrass when they can find it. We recently caught some video of a Great Southern White oviopositing - the technical term for "laying eggs" - on some peppergrass we brought into the Flight Encounter just for their benefit.



Note that Great Southern Whites lay their eggs in clusters on their host plant. They are small and yellow, shaped like very tiny grains of rice or sesame seeds. A female can lay up to 500 eggs in her short lifetime, depositing them one by one in clusters that usually hatch in about five days. The caterpillars eat voraciously for about ten days, then spend about the same amount of time in chrysalis before emerging as adults to continue the life cycle.

Though they don't migrate en masse like monarchs, whites do experience a population shift as the seasons change. As warmer weather approaches in late spring and early summer, peppergrass and cultivated cabbage and collards no longer thrive in Florida, and the population of whites will move north into the rest of the country for the summer, returning to Florida along with the cooler temperatures of winter.