#lepidopterid

[gaslight-gatekeep-glados]

what if two butterflies in a field flying together. and they like each other. but they havent told each other yet.

went for a walk and i saw these two butterflies and i thought they were cute so BOOM they're now both furries in love!!! i love being an artist i can just pull stuff like this

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Fritter Away with the Mormon Fritillary

The Mormon fritillary (Speyeria mormonia) is a common species of butterfly found throughout western North America. There are multiple subspecies distributed throughout its range, which extends from northern Canada to the southern United States, following the Rocky Mountain range. They are found in a variety of habitats, including alpine grasslands, meadows, and sparse pine forests.

Larval S. mormonia are almost entirely dependent on violets for food, while adults will also feed on milkweeds, thistles, and daisies, as well as mud puddles and animal waste. Birds, rodents, lizards, frogs, spiders, and mantids are all common predators of both caterpillar and adult Mormon fritillaries.

Mating for the Mormon fritillary occurs in mid to late summer. Males regularly search open areas for available females, and following an encounter females lay their fertilized eggs in leaf litter near patches of violets. After about 10 days the eggs hatch, but rather than feeding the caterpillars enter a period of hibernation that lasts throughout the winter. Come spring, they emerge and feed on their host plant for just over a month. Pupation takes 10-12 days, after which they emerge as fully mature adults. In the wild, individuals can live up to 4 years.

S. mormonia are rather small, but brightly colored butterflies. The wingspan for females ranges from 25-27mm (0.98-1.06 in), while males are slightly smaller at 23-26mm (0.9-1.02 in). The top wings of both sexes are orange with black spotting, while the undersides are lighter yellow with white spots, and the body is covered in brown or tan fur.

Conservation status: The Mormon fritillary has not been evaluated by the IUCN, but populations are generally considered to be stable across the US. Its most common threat is the disappearance of its host flower species.

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Photos

John Lane

Mark Leppin

David Inouye

[altsmultimuse]

Closed starter for @magioffire.

This land differs drastically from his home which is mainly occupied by non-magical fauna and humans. It is like stepping into a new world. Upon entering and meeting each other, many of the other lepidopterids were in awe as well. Mainly a solitary species, they are not accustomed to so many people in one place, even of their own kin. Some of them exchanged greetings before scattering to their new dwellings.

HE in particular has been summoned to a place called the Spire. Much like the rest of the city it is full of items and creatures the likes of which he has never seen. If he keeps turning around to look at things, his head may fall off! Everything is so new. And bright. He is accustomed mainly to torches or lanterns flickering around at night. Perhaps a glimpse of the sun outside his little hovel when he wakes up too early.

How he wishes to stop and ask for directions. Everyone looks so busy and they say lots of words at once, many of which are long and complicated. For a while he simply watches them pass by with antennae twitching nervously. Most of them don't even spare him a glance. He's going to be late! And he does not entirely know what for! At last comes the moment when he summons enough courage to stop one of the people in the hall, reaching toward them with a clawed hand but not quite touching.

"I'm lost," he states in exasperation.

[the-realm-eternal-art]

Species Concept: Lepidopterids A species I've had flitting around in my head for a while. This one is a high-ranked member of the Butterfly Court.

[aviculor]

You think Venomoth is actually another species of insect that mimics a moth for predation. And what Venonat is your nymph phase?

If it weren’t for Venonat, I would have labeled Venomoth as a Saturniid and called it a day. I can’t peg them down perfectly simply because, as we all know, butterflies and moths don’t have nymphs.

I don’t know of any insects that mimic moths, if anything I’ve only seen the other way around with moths that mimic wasps or bees. Plus, as far as I’ve seen, dense setae is only common in the lineage of insects including bees, butterflies, flies, and beetles, which are all holometabolous with larvae. The closest I’ve seen to a hairy nymph is certain planthoppers, but Venonat is very much not a true bug with those jaws, nor is Venomoth with that entire body.

Venonat is a hodgepodge of generic insect traits on tiny little goblin body. Enormous compound eyes. Capitate antennae which are signature of butterflies, long and thin with a rounded club on the end. I’d call it a strange wingless Lepidopterid (which is not unheard of) if not for one other trait: chewing mouthparts which adult moths and butterflies distinctly do not have.

Now on the other hand, Venomoth and Butterfree have mandibles as well. But their animal origins are more obvious with Venomoth having a more realistic body plan and Butterfree having butterfly wings and evolving from what is distinctly a Swallowtail caterpillar. If Venonat had a coiled proboscis or its fur was hiding the sort of generic mouth most pokemon are hiding (including the bugs), I’d say “Sure, it’s a wingless moth that becomes ‘normal’ when it evolves”. You can chalk it up to Gen 1′s style: a bunch of funky generic “monsters” that in several cases can barely be identified as mammalian or reptilian. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at Scyther and Pinsir. But if you’re taking on the task of trying to classify these things, Venonat is a small, hirsute insect with large and prominent compound eyes and chewing mouthparts, whose origin isn’t clear from context cues the way it is for Pinsir, Scyther, Volbeat and Illumise. Its anatomy is just slightly realistic enough where you’d think it legitimately was meant to look like something.Its Japanese name provides no clues, and its dex entries talk about its large compound eyes, coat of hair, and being attracted to lights at night. Although, they also reveal that it’s a predator that feeds on other insects.

There’s a significant possibility Venonat has no true real-world basis at all, being the insectoid version of all those other genwuns that can only be described as monsters. But barring that because it’s the easiest and least fun answer, I present three interpretations:

Venonat is a velvet ant, a wasp of the family Mutilidae, explaining it being a carnivorous poisonous (venomous) furball with biting jaws. An adult animal that evolves into a different adult animal is an ordinary concept seen in pokemon designs.

Venonat is a wingless moth like I postulated above. There are moths where the females lack wings such as “cankerworms” in the family Geometridae.

Venonat is a furry caterpillar with anatomical features slapped on. Caterpillars do indeed have chewing jaws and compound eyes, and I already explained that Gen 1 took many artistic liberties with anatomy. Many caterpillars have so much setae that they look like furballs, and they tend to be venomous as well. Notably the puss caterpillar/tree asp/southern flannel moth Megalopyge opercularis, although the whole family Megalopygidae qualifies. Alternatively, taking Venomoth’s appearance into slightly more consideration, another choice is the woolly bear, larva of the tiger moth Pyrrharctia isabella (family Erebidae subfamily Arctiinae)

On my phylogenetic tree, I went with option 3. I currently have them both in Lepidoptera as Erebidae but all things considered I may or may not change that to Megalopygidae come gen 8 when I update it again.

As an afterthought, it’s also plausible that Venonat and Venomoth were originally unrelated designs that were forced into one evolutionary family due to both being bug/poison.

[efflorescentenigma-blog]

Alexander Marshal - my favourite botanical artist.

Alexander Marshal (c.1620 – 7 December 1682 in London) was an English entomologist, gardener and botanical artist, noted for the florilegium he compiled, consisting of some 160 folios of plants cultivated in English gardens, and finally presented to George IV in the 1820s.

Marshal belonged to a coterie of gentleman gardeners from London, who cultivated and studied rare plants. These previously unknown species were introduced to England from the Near East and the New World in the 1600s. Marshal worked on his florilegium for some thirty years, and despite his not being a professional artist, his book boasts some of the most pleasing images in botanical art.[1]

Samuel Hartlib, the German polymath, wrote that Marshal had by 1650 produced a florilegium for the botanist and gardener John Tradescant the Younger. Marshal was described as an accomplished painter of flowers and fruit in Sir William Sanderson's Graphice of 1658.

Marshal painted for the pleasure it gave to him and his horticulturist friends. William Freind, Marshal's great nephew and heir, wrote of him as having "an independent fortune and painting merely for his amusement". He believed that plants could only be understood if they were grown to reveal their complete life-cycle. His florilegium is now part of the collections of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The plates depict more than 600 plant species, and detailed studies of insects, birds and animals. It is notable as the only surviving florilegium by an English artist from the 1600s. A selection of Marshal’s works was shown at the "Amazing Rare Things" exhibition hosted by David Attenborough.[2]

Though long known as a botanical illustrator, his talent in depicting insects only came to light in 1980. His album of 57 pages has 129 watercolours of a variety of insects – butterflies, moths, caterpillars, beetles, locusts, spiders, flies, and crickets. On the reverse side of his drawings are notes in his own hand, providing much autobiographical material. Marshal described his Lepidopterid subjects in meticulous detail. He enlisted the aid of John Tradescant (1608–1662), and Henry Compton, in acquiring many rare, exotic insects. His experimenting with pigments led to their being extracted from flowers, berries, gums, and roots, as well as verdigris and arsenic.[3]

TATE

David Attenborough on Alexander Marshal (1620 -1682)

Alison Smith

Over the coming weeks a number of guest contributors will be sharing their favourite watercolours on the Tate blog. This week, David Attenborough discusses Alexander Marshal, an artist who painted for pleasure and shared Attenborough's passion for nature.

Artists over the centuries have painted flowers for several reasons. Some of the earliest were produced to illustrate the herbals - first manuscripts and later printed books that enabled people to identify the plants they needed as food or medicines. Their pictures were formal, almost diagrammatic, but they served their purpose well. In Holland during the seventeenth century artists depicted flowers in a very different way. They revelled in realism. They delineated every hair on a stem, every glistening dewdrop on a leaf, every spot of decay. For them, it seems, this was a way of showing off their extraordinary painterly skills.

But Alexander Marshal, an Englishman who was painting at around the same time, had quite different motives. His pictures were not intended to serve as identification guides or catalogues. Nor did he use them to demonstrate his skills. How can we know that? Because he declined to show them to the world at large. He revealed them only to his close friends.

Marshal had private means. He collected natural history objects, particularly insects. And he was a devoted gardener. In his time, great numbers of new species of flowering plants were arriving in Britain, not only from Europe, but also from the recently discovered Americas, and Marshal had a hand in importing them and supplying them to the great gardens of the country. And he painted them. Some of his sheets of drawings show garden plants arranged in ordered rows. Others, rather less formal, illustrate flowers from the countryside. And among them, drawn to a different scale but with an equal care, are pictures of his insects - a dragonfly, a caterpillar, a stag beetle - and his pets: a greyhound, an African parrot which he shows several times, gaudy macaws and a marmoset from South America.

He worked relatively slowly. At the end of his life, after 30 years of painting, he had accumulated only 159 sheets. People who knew of them tried to buy them, but he refused all offers. After his death his “florilegium”, as he called it, remained in his family for several generations. It is now in the Royal Collection. They still seem like private documents, un-showy and modest, yet close to perfection. If he did not paint his pictures to scale, nor to serve as a key to identification, nor even to demonstrate his ability to others, why did he paint? As you look at them, and delight in the skill with which he records every curl and contour of a petal and the way he mixes his flowers with other objects that he held dear, his motive, surely, cannot be in doubt.

Alexander Marshal painted for love.

[splitsuggestion-blog]

//song thing// Born To Die

Send me a song meme

i really like this song yo, reminds me a lot of my feelings about Team

[gaslight-gatekeep-glados]

new oc! lighthouse keeper but she's a moth! (didn't used to be a moth, she was a middle-aged scottish man before this)

(moth tiddies below, you have been warned)

(yea ik the proportions on it are silly but let me have fun with it)

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Although it has no true governing power, the Emperor of India butterfly certainly deserves its royal title! More commonly known as the Kaisar-i-Hind in Hindi and Urdu, this species is renowned for its bright green wings. This color comes from microscopic structures called photonic crystals, which scatters light to create a vibrant, iridescent color.

(Image: A male Kaisar-i-Hind (Teinopalpus imperialis) by Cheongweei Gan via iNaturalist)

Want to request some art or uncharismatic facts? Just send me proof of donation of any amount to any of the fundraisers on this list, or a Palestinian organization of your choice!

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

Butterflies are important pollinators, but due to their straw-like mouths most of them feed are restricted to a liquid diet of nectar (among other things). One of the few exceptions are zebra longwing butterflies, which don't just transport pollen-- they feed on it! Pollen is rich in protein, which allows this species to live as adults for several months; a rare feat for butterflies.

(Image: A zebra longwing butterfly (Heliconius charithonia) with leftover pollen on her proboscis by Adam Skowronski)

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a ko-fi!

[uncharismatic-fauna]

The Evergreen Bagworm Moth: The Ultimate Stay-At-Home Mom

The evergreen bagworm moth or common basket worm (Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis) has one of the more unusual life cycles of the order Lepidoptera. They begin their lives as part of a clutch of 500-1,000 eggs, laid in September or October, and hatch the following April. While they're still caterpillars, both males and females begin constructing large, elaborately decorated cocoons from silk and fecal matter, as well as bits of leaves and bark from their host plant. This case is built around their bodies as they feed, growing up to 6 cm (2.3 in) in length, and is eventually attached to directly to the host plant. The caterpillar molts through seven instars without ever leaving this case, and when it's large enough the larva seals itself inside and pupates for about 4 weeks.

Fully mature adults emerge from their cocoons in mid-August. While males finally leave behind their protective cases entirely. However, females remain firmly entrenched in their cocoons, and emit pheromones to attract a mate. Once a male arrives, he inserts his abdomen into the cocoon's entrance to inseminate the female. After laying her eggs, the female dies, never having left the protective case that she built for herself. Once her eggs hatch, they disperse along the same host plant or "balloon" on strands of silk to find a new home. Individuals only live a single year.

Adult evergreen bagworm moths are fairly plain, though males and females are easily distinguished. Males are covered with dark brown or black fur, with comb-like antennae typical of moths. Unusually, though, male T. ephereraeformis have transparent wings; these can reach a wingspan of 2.5 cm (0.9 in). Female adult basket worms largely resemble the larvae of the species. They lack wings, as well as eyes, antennae, or a mouth. Her body is about 1.9-2.3 cm (0.74-0.9 in) long, yellowish, and extremely soft and unprotected-- hence the need for a strong cocoon.

While neither sex feeds as adults, caterpillar common basket moths are voracious eaters. Their primary food are evergreens, especially junipers, arborvitae, and red cedar, but they can also be found on a variety of other trees including oaks, willows, maple and elm. The most common predators of the evergreen bagworm moth are wasps and hornets, which are able to more easily infiltrate their protective casings, but both adults and caterpillars may also fall prey to woodpeckers, mice, and sparrows.

This particular species of bagworm moth is common throughout eastern North America, particularly in areas with mixed or evergreen forests. The common basket worm can also thrive in urban environments, as there tend to be fewer predators to control their populations.

Conservation status: The evergreen bagworm moth has not been evaluated by the IUCN. Due to its large and widespread population, the species is likely stable; in many areas it is considered a pest due to the rapid rate at which a population can decimate the local vegetation.

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Photos

Dave Webb

Ben Gruver via iNaturalist

Barbara Speckart