PAINTED LADIES -- ECOLOGY -- CLIMATE WARMING

They’re in a hurry -- heading north where it’s temperate.  Must find  a mate -- lay some eggs --   lots of ground to pass over in only two weeks before they die.   They fly fast – “about 20 miles per hour and they’ve been clocked at 25”.    They “...winter in various places in northern Mexico and Southern California like the Mojave Desert...preferring open habitat like desert, sage growth and meadows.”  They’re painted lady butterflies in this Robbie and Gary Gardening Easy video:  

Emerging from my house one morning this week I was enveloped in a river of painted lady butterflies flowing up my driveway, swooping all about me, upward over my garage.  I drove my car to Route 66 with butterflies continuing to dart around the vehicles there, too, as the painted ladies migrated southwest toward ....  where?

Ecologist Jeff Holmquist, a research scientist at the UCLA White Mountain Research Center and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability describes how the painted ladies ate and ate and ate when they were mere caterpillars (before making a chrysalis) storing up an incredible amount of energy – “a backpack full of food...that’s an abdomen full of fat” before emerging as a butterfly.  “You may as well imagine eating like crazy for a week, crawling into a sleeping bag for a few weeks, and coming out as an eagle”. 

“If you see them hit your windshield, you’ll see that yellow spat, and that’s the lipids.  Fat reserves are very important for a lot of insects, and that’s part of why many societies are rediscovering them as food right now, or have traditionally eaten them.  Butterflies are very fatty.” 

“Expect to see earlier migrations, as the climate warms.”   The painted lady is “probably the world’s most widely distributed butterfly, living everywhere but South America and Antarctica.  There’s a very large migration in Eurasia that’s even more striking than what we have right now, and one that goes from the Sahara to England.”

“A lot of species are very specific in their choice of host plants, but painted ladies aren’t picky.  They're real generalists ... eat lots of thistles, sage, sunflower and mallow plants ... so they’re fine.  But we’re in danger of losing so many other species”

Support butterflies and biodiversity by planting some milkweed.  

“Monarch butterflies need milkweed.  People need to plant the native northern milkweed – the southern, more tropical milkweeds don’t have the same seasonal cycle, and that may remove an important migration cue for monarchs.  Other than that, any good nectar plants are good for a butterfly garden”. 

The painted ladies numbers were thick that I encountered at my house and on Route 66 compared to those shown in the 9+ mins. video above.   The Next Morning segment beginning 6+ mins. into the video I thought was of special interest. 

I did slow a bit as I drove down the Route 66/Foothill Blvd. that has a 40/45 mph limit in my effort to minimize painted lady casualties, all the time wishing the butterflies would fly a bit higher in the sky. 

Migrations of all types are fascinating as some readers here have written about on their blogs. 

I think, too, about the many varieties of insects other societies eat, including some butterfly caterpillars as Holmquist has described some native American Indians do.  

Climate warming not only will have humans adapting but vegetation and creatures on our planet will be doing the same.   What will we be doing -- will our diet be altered -- will we care even more for creatures other than ourselves -- so much unknown.