How monarch butterflies are wired for navigation
In their extraordinary annual migration from North America to Mexico, monarch butterflies are known to use the angle of polarized sunlight as a celestial guide to help them keep to a straight and true path southward. But details of their navigational machinery have remained a mystery. Now, researchers, led by Steven Reppert of University of Massachusetts Medical School, Ivo Sauman of the C...Expanding forests darken the outlook for butterflies, study shows
Changing environmental conditions in the Canadian Rockies are stifling the mating choices of butterflies in the region, say University of Alberta researchers. Smaller and less abundant alpine meadows--largely the result of human activities--are diminishing the alpine butterfly gene pool, creating a pattern that could lead to the butterflies being less able to survive, said Dr. Jens Roland,...Female butterflies go for sparkle -- not size -- when choosing to mate
Size doesn't matter, at least not the size of the eyespots on a male butterfly's wings when female butterflies consider potential mates. The research, to be published onli...Butterflies lose body fat during metamorphosis
A group of scientists from Oregon have discovered that butterflies experience a great loss in body fat during metamorphosis. The details of their findings appear in the March issue of the Journal of Lipid Research, an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology journal. "The transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly is one on nature's great mysteries," says William E. Con...Where have all the butterflies gone?
Cold, wet conditions early in the year mean that 2006 is shaping up as the worst year for California's butterflies in almost four decades, according to Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis. That's a turnaround from last spring, when millions of painted lady butterflies migrated through the Central Valley. But other species have seen steep declines in recent years and...Natural Selection in Butterflies
An international team of researchers has found natural selection in a tropical butterfly species that fought back - genetically speaking - against a highly invasive, male-killing bacteria. Within 10 generations that spanned less than a year, the proportion of males of the Hypolimnas bolina butterfly on the South Pacific island of Savaii jumped from a meager 1 percent of the populatio...