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The oldest butterfly fossils have been dated to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago, though molecular evidence suggets they likely originated in the Cretaceous. [1] Butterflies have a four-stage life cycle, and like other holometabolous insects they undergo complete metamorphosis. [2]
A dragonfly in its final moult, undergoing metamorphosis, it begins transforming from its nymph form to an adult. Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. [1]
The scales on butterfly wings are pigmented with melanins that can produce the colours black and brown. The white colour in the butterfly family Pieridae is a derivative of uric acid, an excretory product. [13] [40]: 84 Bright blues, greens, reds, and iridescence are usually created not by pigments but through the microstructure of the scales.
The adult butterfly emerges (ecloses) from this and expands its wings by pumping haemolymph into the wing veins. [13] Although this sudden and rapid change from pupa to imago is often called metamorphosis, metamorphosis is really the whole series of changes that an insect undergoes from egg to adult.
A butterfly pupa, called a chrysalis, has a hard skin, usually with no cocoon. Once the pupa has completed its metamorphosis, a sexually mature adult emerges. Lepidopterans first appeared in fossil record in the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and have coevolved with flowering plants since the angiosperm boom in the Middle/Late Cretaceous. They show ...
Palm Beach Post photographer Greg Lovett salutes the remarkable transformation of the humble caterpillar into a marvelous monarch
The butterfly isn't just an elegant emblem in Ree's world. In Greek mythology, psyche (which means "soul" or "butterfly") is often depicted with butterfly wings. Butterflies are thus connected to ...
The life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Like all Lepidoptera, monarchs undergo complete metamorphosis; their life cycle has four phases: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Monarchs transition from eggs to adults during warm summer temperatures in as little as 25 days, extending to as many as seven weeks during cool spring conditions.