Butterfly Insect
Butterfly Insect
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 Antique Print INSECTS BUTTERFLY MOTH Larousse 1897  US $97.50
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 Antique Print INSECT TORTOISESHELL PEACOCK BUTTERFLY EMPEROR MOTH Larousse 1897 US $87.75
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 BUTTERFLY art insect FRAMED PRINT SET Raquel Edwards US $67.50
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 1787 Antique Print Diderot Insects Butterfly bombix Pericallia matronula et alt US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Butterfly Fox Moth US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Butterfly Bombix Apparent 81 US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Butterfly Bombix species US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Butterfly Buff tip species US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Butterfly Pine Processionary US $59.50
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 1787 Encyclopedia Diderot Natural History Insects butterfly garden tiger moth US $59.50
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 1787 Antique print Diderot Natural History Insects Bombix Butterfly US $54.03
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 JAN VAN KESSEL II Butterflies Moths Other Insects PRINT US $52.99
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 23 Hand Colored Plates Of Insects And Butterflies US $50.00
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 Vintage Copper Insect Butterfly Metal Art Petrified Burl Wood Sculpture Figurine US $38.24
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 1841 vintage BUTTERFLY INSECTS original hand painted lithograph No 17 US $36.00
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 1841 vintage BUTTERFLY INSECTS original hand painted lithograph No 30 US $36.00
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 1841 vintage BUTTERFLY INSECTS original hand painted lithograph No 31 US $36.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 224 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 228 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 232 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 241 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 311 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 Hand colored butterfly Plate 361 Edward Donovan Insects of Britain circa 1800 US $35.00
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 BUTTERFLIES Moths Insects Crickets SUPERB Antique Print US $32.62
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 1841 vintage BUTTERFLY INSECTS original hand painted lithograph No 12 US $32.00
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 RARE Vintage 1886 MATTED Print Picture BUTTERFLY Moths INSECTS Nature GERMANY US $31.00
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The Surprising Monarch Butterfly Trip To Mexico
Here is a detailed article on one of most inspiring natural voyages that is also a part of Mexico's Traditions, the surprising voyage of the Monarch Butterfly from Northern America to Mexico.
Year after year when autumn approaches, following a millennial call whose origin remains an unsolved puzzle to Man, the monarch butterfly of North America undertakes the longest known voyage in the insect kingdom.
After spending the summer season in the native fields and forests of central and northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, millions of these delicate insects start a three thousand mile journey south so that they can spend the winter in central Mexico's splendid Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains.
The final stop for the southern journey of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) was for a considerable time a unsolvable puzzle for researchers. But in 1975 the Canadian zoologist Doctor. Fred A. Urquhart, partnered up with Kenneth Brugger and Rafael Sanchez Castaneda, discovered their secret. The butterflies were spending the gelid season of winter in the dry river beds and gulches of the high Sierra Madre mountains, at an altitude of nine to 10,000 feet in an area that is in between the states of Michoacan and Mexico State, in the central region of Mexico.
Urquhart wrote about their discovery: "I gawked in surprise at the view. Butterflies, millions upon millions of monarch butterflies! They stuck in tightly packed masses to each branch and tree trunks of the tall, gray-green oyamel trees. They swirled through the air like autumn leaves and carpeted the ground in their flaming colored myriads on this Mexican hillside."
This discovery provided one of the most fantastic revelations about the insect world. All of a sudden, as if drawn by a forceful magnet, these frail summer inhabitants of a vast area that covers over half of the USA travel south in hurried hordes in a voyage that takes them south over lush prairies, valleys, hills, dry deserts and towns, crossing the Mexico-USA border through Texas, to meet up by the millions, like orange-colored tributaries of some great brook, into a region in central Mexico where the Sierra Madre and the Volcanic Belt mountains link up.
A relatively minor forested area of only 12,500 acres is the refuge where the monarch butterflies pass the winter and pair before journeying back north once again in the spring.
Although this appeared to be a tremendous discovery for the scientific community, it was considered general knowledge to the area's inhabitants. These creatures had been part of their lives since times long past. Pre-Hispanic inhabitants attached a lot of importance to the monarch butterfly, which played a important role in their local religion, myths and legends, and were shown in their art.
Joined with fire and the movement of the sun, butterflies or papalotl represented the spirits of warriors who had died in battle or on the sacrificial altar. It was thought that after travelling with the Sun for 4 years, they'd come back to earth as butterflies, to enjoy the sweet nectar of flowers. This belief, most likely, also applied to monarch butterflies, "daughters of the Sun" whose yearly migration represented the replenishing cycle of Nature.
In 1986, eleven years after Urquhart's discovery, the Mexican Govt protected this ecologically crucial mountain area by establishing the Monarch Butterfly Special Biosphere Reserve. It sas a grand total of around 40 thousand acres of forest were established as protected areas for the migration, wintering and reproduction of the monarch butterfly, as well as for the conservation of its vital environment.
Summer residence of the Monarch Butterfy
During the summer, monarch butterflies live in an area including 1.5 million square miles and that extends from southern Canada to the southern tips of the Sierra Nevada, the Rocky Mountains to the West and the Appalachians to the East within the borders of the United States of America. This area has enough milkweed (Asclepias), the sole plant on whose leaves the larvae of this species can feed. This plant also contains a toxic alkaloid that makes the larvae impervious to many natural predators, and supplies the pigment which gives these butterflies their particular coloration.
The longer days and high summer temperatures of this area allow the monarch butterfly to grow and reproduce. During those months, its life cycle is like that of any butterfly. They live from 2 to six weeks, in which they reproduce, lay their eggs and, shortly thereafter, die.
Nevertheless the generation that stems from the cocoons under the September sun has a totally different destiny than that of its parents and grandparents. After the fall equinox, as the days grow shorter and temperatures go down, the autumn butterflies endure a sequence of hormonal changes which hold back their reproductive system, preventing sexual maturity, and permitting them to save energy and survive much longer than their parents.
Instead of generating the desire to pair, the shortening days create in these creatures another urgent need, of similar importance for their survival as reproduction... An urge to travel south, towards warmer lands where they can live through the winter chills, postponing their reproduction cycle till the following season.
Hence they must travel in order to preserve the species. If they survive the dangerous journey, they can live up to nine months, twelve times longer than any other butterfly.
The Great Monarch Butterfly Journey
After storing enough energy and body fat during the summer months, these indefatigable travelers will fly as much as three thousand miles to reach their Mexican wintering grounds. They travel twenty four seven, and rest during the night, sleeping on tree branches in groups of at least six hundred individuals.
Depending on the winds, they can travel at speeds from 9 to twenty-seven miles per hour, covering as much as eighty miles in daily eight-hour shifts. Their favourite routes lie along low open valleys, where they can best exploit the north winds to push them along in open-winged glides, which lets them fly long distances effortlessly. This is the way the monarch butterflies can make their 3000 mile journey in only one month.
By mid-November, the green trenches of the Mexican butterfly sanctuaries, covered with oyameles or firs, oaks and spruces, change to shades of ochre, brown and orange. Leaves and pine needles become covered with a singular texture made by the wings of the millions of butterflies that hang in thick groups, from the tree branches and tree trunks. Here they survive the winter cold, in a state of semi-hibernation that permits them to save their energy and fat until spring arrives.
The Monarch Butterflies Return
Warmer days and longer daylight hours send their age-old signals to the sleeping monarchs telling them that spring has returned. They start to stir and shake off the listlessness of their long sleep. They slowly open their wings to let the sun heat in and to warm their bodies.
Slowly the air comes alive and orange tinted, with hundreds of butterflies that fly around from flower to flower collecting the sweet nectar that will nourish and give them strength for their homeward flight.
Light, heat, and their new-found freedom excite their sexual maturity. Their buried instincts take over, giving way to courting rituals and copulation. And then, without further circling, just as when they all of a sudden started their trip south five months before, as if moved by an internal clock that urges them to go back home, they start their return journey. Clouds of butterflies rise up into the air, their beating wings generating a muted throb looking for air currents which will carry them away.
Their numbers have already been reduced. Many have died from the rain or from the winter cold. Mating has additionally taken its toll on most of the males, who invested their last energies in the reproductive act, and then perished.
But among the survivors are a large number of fertilized females who, during their way back home, will deposit their eggs on their nightly stops to rest. 2 weeks later these eggs will hatch into caterpillars, which will in turn become chrysalis that, in late spring, will metamorphose into butterflies.
Of these, some will remain to copy the cycle there, where they were born. The rest will continue northward to a home they don't yet know, where, like countless generations before them, they'll live, mate and die. And it will not be their young, or their offspring's offspring, but the new generation of butterflies, those born at the end of summer that may again respond to the call to migrate south, as their ancestors did the year before, beginning another cycle.
The Mysteries of the Sovereign Butterfly
It still is a puzzle how these miniscule, delicate insects know which path to follow, since the winter visitors were born in the far-off forests of the US and Canada, and the sovereigns reproduced in Mexico will never return there.
How does a complete generation of monarchs travel an one or two thousand mile route that neither they, nor their parents, have ever flown before? How do their descendants, born after the winter season along the migration back north, manage to find a way to go back to their parents' place of origin?
Again, how does such a little, fragile and exposed creature manage to survive the rigors of traveling such long distances exposed to the sun, the rain, the cold and the depredation of man? Where does such a tiny body store so much energy? What makes it so tireless? How can an insect be so incredible?
Many answers have been suggested for these enigmas, but still none is final. But one thing is clear. The monarch butterfly is one of the most astonishing creatures on this world. And, the more we know about it, the more amazing it becomes.
This long distance traveler, citizen of the Earth, is the most delicate and gorgeous symbol of the transformation and renewing of Nature. Above all , it's a prime example of a species' instinct to survive.
Little wonder our ancestors adored the Monarch Butterfly and this is why it's so important that we protect them.
Guadalupe Q. Pali is a magazine editor in Mexico, writes many articles on traveling in Mexico and its natural marvels, including some like What to do in Puerto Vallarta, that is part of the Puerto Vallarta's Travel Guide web site.
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