Butterfly Life Cycle: Adult Butterflies

## **In this final post of the series about the butterfly life cycle, learn about adult butterflies and how to support them in your garden.**

by Jill Staake on May 20, 2017.

Experienced butterfly gardeners know their gardens need both nectar plants, for adult butterflies, and host plants, for caterpillars to eat.

The best butterfly gardens provide places for every part of the butterfly life cycle, from egg to caterpillar, chrysalis to adults.

This series of posts explores each of these butterfly life cycle steps, and how your own garden can better support butterflies during those steps.

* Butterfly Life Cycle: Eggs.
* Butterfly Life Cycle: Caterpillars.
* Butterfly Life Cycle: Chrysalis.

By the time a butterfly emerges from chrysalis, it has been through quite a journey.

A few days as an egg, several weeks as a caterpillar, several more undergoing metamorphosis.

The final phase of the butterfly life cycle is generally only a few weeks long, too.

It begins as the chrysalis cracks open and the butterfly pulls itself free.

It doesn’t look much like a butterfly at this point.

The body is plump, the wings are small and crumpled.

But after a moment’s rest, the butterfly begins to pump fluid from its body into the veins along its wings, inflating them.

Another rest while the wings dry, and the butterfly is ready for its first flight.

From now on, the butterfly has only one primary goal: mating.

Its sole driving purpose is to find another butterfly of the same species.

It will need to eat and rest to maintain the energy it needs, and it often becomes a pollinator along the way.

But as far as the butterfly is concerned, its only purpose is to make more butterflies.

The eating mainly takes place from flowers.

Butterflies seek out nectar plants for the *high-energy* sugar kick.

But many butterflies add other foods to their diet, like fruit, tree sap, dung, and even carrion.

They seek out mud on the ground for “*puddling*,” were they obtain both water and the salts and minerals they need.

Some prefer to feed in the shade, others like sun.

Some butterflies will visit the same set of flowers every day, in the same order, a process known as “*trap-lining.*”

Butterflies feed by extending their proboscis, a *straw-like* tube, into the food and drawing out the juices.

It’s a fun process to watch – add nectar plants to your garden to see it up close.

   When butterflies aren’t eating, they’re generally resting.

On hot afternoons, they’ll seek out shady places so they don’t overheat.

Overnight, they find sheltered spots like tall grasses, shrubs, or cracks in rocks.

Some rest together in large numbers, known as “*roosting.*”

In the morning, they move into the sun, spreading their wings to gather the energy they need to heat their bodies.

Butterflies are ectothermic, which means their body temperature depends on the temperature of the air around them.

They need to get their bodies up to about 85 degrees F, before they can fly.

However, they have ways of warming themselves, including basking in the sun and even shivering.

This can warm them many degrees, even on chilly mornings.

    All this eating and resting is just a build-up to the main event: mating.

Females and males of the same species find each other using sight and pheremones.

They may dance around in the air, with males fighting over a female or a male wooing his mate.

When the female is ready, she lands and raises the tip of her abdomen.

The male butterfly has a pair of claspers at the end of the abdomen used to hold onto the female abdomen during mating.

Males and females lock together at the ends of the abdomens, and butterflies may stay attached for anywhere from an hour up to twelve or more!

In this way, males can make sure that they are the only ones who fertilize the female’s eggs.

Females sometimes fly off during the mating process to feed or find a more sheltered location, while the male stays attached.

It takes a few days, usually, for the eggs to be fertilized inside the female’s body.

When she’s ready, she begins to oviposit on or near the proper host plants, a process covered in more detail here.

Over the course of several weeks, she may lay as many as 1000 eggs.

Neither she nor the male stay nearby to protect or raise the young; butterfly caterpillars are entirely on their own.

The mating complete, the butterfly life cycle draws to a close.

The butterflies are likely quite battered at this point, with tattered wings that may even be missing pieces.

After all, just about everything preys on butterflies – birds, lizards, wasps, mice.

Brushing against leaves damages their delicate wings, and wind and rain take their toll too.

Within a few weeks, the butterfly simply slows down and then stops.

As it lies on the ground, it’s likely to become food for some other creature.

The cycle continues, though, with the eggs and caterpillars left behind.