There are amazing butterflies in the world - mayflies. This order includes more than 3,000 species of insects. In each of them, a one-day butterfly lives no more than a day, during which it manages to be born, leave offspring and die.
And their appearance is somewhat non-standard. A distinctive feature of most butterflies are light translucent wings and 2-3 long tail filaments.
Mayflies do not need to be distracted by searching for food. They simply do not have a normal mouth opening, and their digestive organs are filled with air.
Typically, the process of degeneration of a larva into a butterfly occurs simultaneously for many hundreds of insects. And they all go on their first flight together, where they split into pairs.
From a distance, the mating games of ephemerals look like a swarm of flying multi-colored snow over the water; up close, they look like a dance. First, the females flutter upward, hover for a few seconds (at the same time the males fly up to them) and smoothly glide downwards, then all elements of the dance are repeated again.
The purpose of the males after the “dance” is fulfilled. Most of them die right in the air and fall into the water to the delight of the fish, the rest will last another hour or two.
Female mayflies scatter across the territory of a river or lake to lay eggs. And by evening, their life also ends. One butterfly lays about 10,000 eggs. But out of this huge number, no more than a tenth of the total offspring is born. Most eggs and larvae are eaten by fish.
By the way, experienced fishermen who know about such gastronomic preferences of fish get good catches using mayfly larvae as bait. The offspring of mayflies differ from other inhabitants of the reservoir by the presence of ready-made tail filaments and tracheal gills
The larvae themselves, unlike the butterflies, are nothing remarkable. They are extremely voracious, grow actively and can molt about twenty times during their larval life. At the same time, they live for 2-3 years, as if in compensation for the short life of adults.
When the time comes to transform into a butterfly, so many gases accumulate inside the mayfly larva that the outer shell swells, floats and cracks. And the newborn butterfly clings to the remains of the shell and dries out.
Then the last molt of the insect occurs. The skin on the back of the day-old is torn and the butterfly flies up to perform its first and last dance. Mayflies are the only order of insects in which externally formed butterflies with wings can molt.
Despite the fact that mayfly offspring are left completely unattended, their number and distribution do not decrease. So far, these amazing insects have not been found only in the Hawaiian Islands and St. Helena Island.
Night and day species of butterflies
Nocturnal butterflies differ from day butterflies in very few ways. The main difference is that during rest, the night butterfly folds its wings, but the day butterfly does not. Also, the color of the day butterfly is brighter. Its coloring includes blue, red, yellow, and other colors. While most of the moths are gray-black.
Therefore, there is no such criterion as night or day butterflies. Mostly people say this to simplify explanations about who they saw during the day or at night.
Butterfly habitats
In fact, butterflies are distributed throughout the world and live on every continent except Antarctica. They are physically unable to withstand the eternal cold, and in addition to this, there are no plants on the glaciers that could serve them as food.
And yet, scientists were able to find out the location of the largest number of butterfly species - these are the territories of India, its environs and the forests of South Asia. Their habitat primarily depends on climatic conditions. These insects love warmth and humidity, so their accumulation in most cases depends on these two factors.
They are most often found in flowering meadows, fields and forests, because there, not including the cold seasons, it is almost always warm and there is a sufficient number of plants that act as food.
Interesting facts about the lifespan of butterflies
- Did you know that many species of adult butterflies are born without a mouth? Some can ingest nectar from flowers, but most species rely on the nutrients they have been able to store as caterpillars. This is why adults usually have a short life expectancy.
- Only one or two out of every 100 butterfly eggs survive to the caterpillar stage. Because so many eggs are lost to predators and disease, female butterflies lay hundreds of eggs at a time.
- Some butterflies live longer by hibernating in safe and warm places. Others, such as the North American monarch butterfly, migrate across the country to spend the colder months in places like California.
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What does the Mayfly breathe?
Some species of mayflies (Baetis) dive under water for the same purpose and lay eggs on the lower surface of the stone. During this operation, they breathe air underwater, which they take with them when diving. After laying their eggs, female mayflies also die.
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What do butterflies eat?
As we all know, in the past the butterfly was a caterpillar and at this stage of its life cycle it is forced to absorb a large amount of food. It can serve as food from cabbage and ordinary leaves, grass, as well as seeds and fruits of plants.
But in doing so, they greatly spoil the quality of fruits and vegetables, interfere with the sowing process and the development of plantings. In the body of a butterfly, the insect does much less harm. After all, all she needs for food is flower nectar. The butterfly has a proboscis, which increases depending on the structure of the flower and thanks to it, it has the opportunity to suck nectar from the plant.
Not every flower is edible, and in order to test the plant for its ability to play the role of food, the insect probes it with its paws, on which there are receptors that determine the edibility of the plant, and after this process is completed, the butterfly, depending on the result, straightens its proboscis.
What kind of life do mayflies lead?
Burrowing forms lead
secretive
lifestyle
, they are difficult to detect.
The clayey banks of rivers are indented with burrows of larvae. Aquatic invertebrates often crawl into them and become prey for predatory mayflies
.
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