Florida Butterfly Colony Evolution

Where do butterflies spend the night?

These 10 (or more) Zebra Longwing Butterflies (Heliconius charitonius) congregate every night on a dead branch of a large live oak tree in something resembling a butterfly hive.

After two months of virtually zero rain weather across Florida has turned a little damper with some drizzly days and nights, which seems to have spurned a new flight of butterflies.

This evidence of congregate over-nighting begs the question, why?

Presumably there is safety in numbers. It is far less likely that a single butterfly will fall to a predator when there are many together. Another possible reason for this behavior is that the butterflies together resemble something like a large fungi growing on the dead branch, rather than a group of individual butterflies, thus also protecting them from predators. Finally, it could be that they are very social insects (less likely). This family of butterflies is the only butterfly known to exhibit this type of congregate behavior.

Click on any of these images for a larger view.

In some of the images I count 12 or more tightly clustered Zebra Longwings. Count heads rather than wings as they are packed in tightly.

The Zebra Longwing is also referred to as the Zebra Heliconian and it is the State Butterfly of Florida.

In general, butterflies spend the night or periods of inclement weather perched on the underside of leaves or they crawl deep between blades of grass or into crevices in rocks to find shelter and sleep. We rarely have bad weather at this latitude in winter (and there has been no weather to speak of since I discovered this hive-colony) so this behavior is certainly a more complex evolution of an anti-predation strategy.

Butterfly Colonies

These Zebra Longwing Butterflies (Heliconius charitonius) are fascinating. They always choose the worst, scrawniest branch or clump of spanish moss on which to build their new colony.

Below: I put some healthier spanish moss next to this colony and I got a little too close to the butterflies causing them to all abandon their pitiful perch. They rejected the new moss and continue to build their roost on the desiccated moss that barely hangs from this stand of bamboo.

The butterfly colony is constantly evolving. Here at least 6 butterflies share a flimsy strand of spanish moss. Sometimes they are clustered together so tightly it is impossible to count them all without disturbing their rest:

See BUTTERFLY COLONY EVOLUTION.

In another section of the property a new colony starts to evolve on a dead Live Oak branch. The tree branch is barely held together by some thorny similax vine.

The butterfly at bottom right (click on image to enlarge) is a different species, stopping by for an overnight visit, I guess. It is a Gulf Fritillary.

Yet another colony beings to take shape on another dead and precariously dangling Live Oak branch.

All around the windows Green Tree Frogs (Hyla cinerea) congregate on the cool glass of the house (we keep the house at about 72° F, 22° C) as nighttime temperatures remain in the high 70°s to low 80°s (25° - 28° C) during these hottest nights of late summer.

This little guy, pictured with my index finger for scale, has an iridescent glow. Click on the image for a larger view.

More Must Reads from the Web

Assume You've Been Hacked

With the latest theft of billions of usernames and passwords by Russian hackers how does one keep their sensitive data safe? Strategies include using anagrams from a sentence, and using symbols and numbers to make usernames and passwords much more complicated.

Cures for Canines

Start-ups work on biotech medications for pets.

A Man and His Cat

A charming essay about pet ownership by Tim Kreider.

"She refused to drink water from a bowl, coveting what she believed was the superior-quality water I drank from a glass. I attempted to demonstrate to the cat that the water we drank was the very same water by pouring it from my glass into her bowl right in front of her, but she was utterly unmoved, like a birthed being shown Obama's long-form Hawaiian birth certificate. In the end I gave in and began serving her water in a glass tumbler, which she had to stick her whole face into to drink from."

Lizards Invade Florida

A 24-inch lizard, the Argentine black and white tegu (pronounced TAY-goos), presents a challenge to Florida wildlife managers because it is more tolerant of cold than many reptiles giving it a large potential range.

Conservatives Attack the Nature Conservancy

Don't they have anything better to do? Conservatives attack the nation's largest environmental group because of one oil well on one piece of property they own.

Photo: Cristobal Herrera/European Pressphoto Agency

Miles of Algae
and a Multitude of Hazards

The stench from decaying algae began rising from coastal waterways in southeastern Florida early this month, shutting down businesses and beaches during a critical tourism season. Officials arrived, surveyed the toxic muck and declared states of emergency in four counties, then took off for Cleveland for the Republican National Convention.

Photo: Rhonda Wise/Agence France-Press/Getty Images

Photo: Greg Lovett/The Palm Beach Post/AP

Florida Governor Rick Scott doesn't believe in global warming or climate change anymore than does Donald Trump or Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and why should they care? They don't live amongst the dead fish and dying waterways of southeast Florida, and their reelection campaigns are largely funded by Big Sugar which polluted Lake Okeechobee and caused the algae bloom in the first place.

Faces to Remember from Rio