Category: Insects – Butterflies & Dragonflies & Damselflies

Backyards, prairies, and wetlands are covered with blooms at this time of year.  Many plants depend on butterflies to visit flowers, collect pollen, and move it to another flower to assist in plant  reproduction.  Plants offer nectar as a sweet treat to attract butterfly species, who come for a sip and carry away some of the plant’s pollen.  As butterflies move from plant to plant, the pollen is picked up or deposited at each stop.

Butterflies can only consume liquids, sipping through long, hollow tongues.  They generally prefer a mixture of different nectar sources.  Plants with many blooms or clustered flowers are preferred by all  pollinators because less energy is needed going from one bloom to the next over very short distances.

Female butterflies search for specific plants to lay their eggs on.  These are called host plants, and they  provide food for the caterpillars.  Each butterfly species requires specific host plants, and caterpillars will starve before eating any others.

During the heat of summer, there are lots of butterfly species to watch for.  In northern Illinois, watch for monarch, black swallowtail, tiger swallowtail, white cabbage, red admiral, question mark, common buckeye, queen, and viceroy. 

An easy way to observe many different species is to find areas rich with flowers providing nectar for the butterflies to feed on.  Flowers in full bloom in our area include coneflowers, milkweeds, and sunflowers.  Many of these plants provide seeds later in the year and throughout the winter for backyard birds. 

Watch for these flowers and their visitors, or consider planting a variety of flowers in your backyard to attract butterflies to your own habitats.

From upper to lower, left to right: Black swallowtail larva, Butterfly weed, Common buckeye butterfly, Common milkweed, Gray-headed coneflower, Queen Anne’s lace, Queen butterfly, Question mark butterfly, White clover, Spicebush swallowtail butterfly

All pictures by DonArnold, 2022 except: Question mark, Polygonia interrogationis, by Joe Finney, Jul 2013……… Common buckeye, Junonia coenia, by Jim Flannery, Jul 2015……… Queen butterfly, Danaus gilippus, by Roy Niswanger, Oct 2008

The life cycle of a butterfly includes four stages: the egg, the larva or caterpillar, the pupa or chrysalis, and the adult butterfly.  Butterflies are eaten by many predators including birds, frogs, toads, ants, wasps, snakes, rodents, and mammals.  They are vulnerable during any of the life cycle stages, but mostly as caterpillars or adults.  Butterflies have developed several strategies to avoid predation including flight, camouflage, poison, and mimicry.

Four life cycle stages….egg laying, larva, pupa with adult emerging

Butterflies in flight are hard to follow.  Large, flexible wings brought together in a clapping motion forcefully expels the air caught between the wings.  Butterflies have control over which way the wings are aligned and the direction the air is expelled, pushing the butterfly where it wants to go.  They use this ability to direct their flight in sudden changes of direction to avoid flying predators.

Camouflage is another highly effective defense strategy.  Dark, round spots located farther back on the wings appear to an observer as eyes on a much larger face.  Deimatic behavior involves sudden movement in combination with this type of pattern that causes potential predators to hesitate or stop from attacking.

Butterflies often have many splendid colors on the backs of their wings.  The underside of the wings of many species are quite drab.  In this way, the insect can sit still with wings folded together and draw very little attention to itself.  Patterns and colors may also blend in with their surroundings making them appear as sticks, leaves, tree bark, or bird droppings.

Bright colors, such as the oranges seen on Monarch butterflies, are a warning display to potential predators that this butterfly is bad tasting or toxic.  Several plants, such as milkweed, have developed chemical toxins as a defense against herbivores eating them.  Monarchs and other species can eat these plants, separate out the toxin, and store it for their own use.  After becoming sick from eating one or more of these butterflies, predators learn to avoid them.

Some species have developed bright colorful patterns that are quite similar to toxic species.  The viceroy butterfly can be difficult to distinguish from a monarch, especially given only a quick look.  Advertising their bright colors, viceroy butterflies fool predators into thinking they are also toxic.  This is referred to as mimicry.

Butterflies are out in large numbers throughout the high summer, and you can observe many of these strategies in backyards, public areas, or open fields.

At this time of year, creeks, rivers, marshes and ponds are filling with water from melting snow and spring rains.  Dragonflies and damselflies are two animal groups to watch for in these wetland areas.

You may not see many of them flying around your backyard or local ponds yet.  The ones we love to watch flitting over the ponds and showing off their aerial skills are adults.  Each summer, males & females will mate and lay eggs in submerged plant stems, mud-banks, damp logs or directly into the water.  After two to six weeks, eggs will hatch into naiads (pronounced nay’-ed), sometimes called nymphs, and they will live in the ponds for several months to several years, depending on the species.

A naiad is a formidable predator. The abdomen contains a set of openings through which the naiad can propel water at jet force pushing it through the pond at incredible speeds. The lower jaw of this insect is about one-third the length of the entire body.  When it is not eating, this jaw remains at rest under the head.  But when hunting, the lower jaw can shoot out to stab its prey.  All dragonflies are in the insect order Odanata, a Greek word meaning ‘tooth’.  An excellent short video can be found at A Baby Dragonfly’s Mouth Will Give You Nightmares | Deep Look

Naiads can be placed into three groups: ones that crawl, ones that climb or ones that burrow.  The crawlers have long legs, drab colors and move slowly along the bottom of ponds.  Climbing naiads can be found on dense vegetation in quiet ponds.  Burrowers can be found in muddy banks along faster flowing creeks and streams.

Try this activity to learn more: take a dip net or small container and scoop up some of the soft mud at the bottom of a pond.  Pour that out into a shallow, light colored tray.  Keep it shaded and wet, so any naiads are protected until you return them to the pond.  With a little luck, you should be able to spot one or two of them.  Can you identify their color?  Can you find their lower jaw and see how it moves?  Can you see the openings for water intake and jet propulsion along the back underside of the abdomen? 

Come back in the early morning or late afternoon of a summer day, when temperatures start to soar, to see if you can spot a naiad climbing out of the water onto plant stems or leaves and molt one final time to reveal its wings and fully formed adult body.

Check out these links to learn more about common dragonflies in Illinois: https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/guides/guide/380

http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/zoology/odonata/