Do you know what a mourning butterfly looks like?

The most spectacular and largest representative of the family Nymphalidae of the order Lepidoptera is the mourning butterfly. This flyer, widely distributed throughout Eurasia, with the exception of the tropics, is absent only on the territory of the Mediterranean states, but at the same time, some individuals fly into the tundra territories. Once brought to America, the mourning has spread from Canada to Mexico. For unknown reasons, in the forties of the XX century the number of individuals of the mourning trees sharply decreased. In this regard, in 1997 it was included in the Red Book of the Smolensk region in the 3rd category, which includes species distributed in limited areas, which are threatened with extinction in case of changes in natural or human conditions.

Appearance

Mourning - a butterfly that got its name due to its color. Its coloring is so remembered that it leaves a huge impression for many years. Most accurately, what a butterfly mourning butterfly looks like, was described by S.T. Aksakov. Shiny, covered with a large amount of colored pollen, velvet dark brown, coffee, and at a certain angle, dark purple wings are trimmed with a white or yellow serrated border, along which bright blue spots are located. The wingspan of the butterfly reaches 7-10 cm. Like all nymphalids, the mouth of the butterflies is a proboscis, which curls up and unfolds when the butterfly eats. Its forelegs are short, with no claws on them.

origin of name

Karl Linnaeus, knowing what a butterfly mourning tree looks like, gave it the name antiopa in 1758, in honor of the heroine of the tragedy Euripides, who tells about the sufferings and troubles that fell on Antiope - the daughter of the Theban king Niktya, seduced by Zeus, who presented in the image of a satyr, and gave birth to him two twins married to Epic.

Studying the mourning plants, scientists drew attention to the influence of external temperatures prevailing during the development of the pupa on the subsequent intensity of the color of the wings of the insect. Depending on the climatic conditions of the habitat, there are differences in how the mourning butterfly looks - the color of the wing darkens, the size of the blue spots decreases, and the density of the black deposition on the border changes. So, in overwintered butterflies, flying out of their wintering places in early spring, the border is almost white. However, this does not apply to butterflies wintering in the East - they have a yellow border. In July-September, a new generation of mourners, whose pupae developed in the warm season, has a bright yellow border.

Development

In June, the female lays up to 100 eggs. Caterpillars hatch in June-July and stay in tight groups until pupation. The way a mourning butterfly looks like being in the caterpillar stage is familiar to many. Black with white small dots and bright red spots (up to 7 pieces) between the spikes of the caterpillar often crawl along the leaves of birch, alder, maple, ash and other plants that are their food. The developmental stage of the pupa is about 11 days. The butterfly feeds mainly on the sap of trees, so it can often be found on birches during intense sap formation.