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The butterflies avoid laying eggs near existing ones, reducing intraspecific competition between caterpillars, which are also cannibalistic, so those that lay on vacant leaves provide their offspring with a greater chance of survival. The stipules thus appear to have evolved as Gilbertian mimics of butterfly eggs, under selection pressure from ...
These are thought to protect the plant as the butterfly avoids laying eggs near eggs already on a host plant, to give her own eggs the best chance of survival. A later example is the mimicking of a mammalian hormone by an ant toxin which causes long-lasting hypersensitivity, Gilbertian mimicry at a molecular level.
Eggs of black-veined white (Aporia crataegi) on apple leaf A butterfly from the genus Euploea, laying eggs underneath the leaf. Butterfly eggs are protected by a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop.
The body of an adult butterfly or moth (the imago) has three distinct divisions, called tagmata, connected at constrictions; these tagmata are the head, thorax, and abdomen. Adult lepidopterans have four wings – a forewing and a hindwing on both the left and the right side of the thorax – and, like all insects, three pairs of legs.
The butterflies avoid laying eggs near existing ones, reducing intraspecific competition between caterpillars, which are also cannibalistic, so those that lay on vacant leaves provide their offspring with a greater chance of survival. The stipules thus appear to have evolved as Gilbertian mimics of butterfly eggs, under selection pressure from ...
Limenitis arthemis, the red-spotted purple or white admiral, is a North American butterfly species in the cosmopolitan genus Limenitis.It has been studied for its evolution of mimicry, and for the several stable hybrid wing patterns within this nominal species; it is one of the most dramatic examples of hybridization between non-mimetic and mimetic populations.
This form of egg production is helpful because larvae are much more vulnerable than adult stages, although they also utilize aposematism. Because many of the nutrients needed to produce eggs are obtained in the adult stage, the larval stage is much shorter and less susceptible to predation.
Lepidoptera (/ ˌ l ɛ p ɪ ˈ d ɒ p t ər ə / LEP-ih-DOP-tər-ə) or lepidopterans is an order of winged insects which includes butterflies and moths.About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera have been described, representing 10% of the total described species of living organisms, [1] [2] making it the second largest insect order (behind Coleoptera) with 126 families [3] and 46 superfamilies ...