Heliconius Butterfly
This is one of the most amazing fight that is little known to the world. This fight or a battle for survival has been taking place for centuries.
The two fighting parties:
Heliconius butterfly and passion flower vines.
Passion Flower Leaves
The Cause of the Battle:
Heliconius butterfly is very beautiful and it lays eggs only passion flower climbers. When the eggs hatch, the offspring devours the leaves.
The Battle:
1. The plant naturally wants to protect itself. It changed the shape of its leaves so that Heliconius butterflies can't find them because they depend only on their sight to find the vines.
2. The butterflies started developing another way to detect the passion flower leaves. They started drumming their legs on the leaves to detect their egg laying place.
3. The plant becomes smarter. They know (don't ask me how) that the larvae of this butterfly eat one another. The leaves produce yellow spots on them that look like eggs of Heliconius butterfly. This drove away the female butterflies.
4. Also the young leaves (tendrils) of passion flower soon begin to drop off after forming along with the eggs of butterflies.
5. It started producing nectar on its own that attracted the predators of butterflies.
The reason for the Heliconius butterflies to choose the passion flower plants to lay their eggs are:
*. The vine leaves are poisonous to all other insects except this butterfly and few other.
*. These butterflies itself become toxins impregnated so that no birds will touch them.
What a natural fight!
Sources: Reader's Digest, Google images.
1 comment:
This is a fascinating post! I had never heard of this before. I only wish I could witness it first hand.
Post a Comment