For many conservationists, butterflies are some of the key species that can indicate the quality of an environment not only for themselves but for many other, often less visible, species. Some of their specific needs are often well known, but movements around their habitat and important factors within it are less understood. To help address this issue, a new study reports for the first time the...

Crude extracts from larvae, pupae and adults of cabbage white butterflies, Pieris rapae and Pieris brassicae, and green-veined butterfly, Pieris napi, have an ability to induce apoptosis in the human cancer cell lines. As apoptosis inducing protein, pierisin-1 and -2 have been isolated from pupae of P. rapae and P. brassicae, respectively, and shown to exhibit DNA ADP-ribosylating activity. Alt...

We report three experiments that investigate whether faces are capable of capturing attention when in competition with other non-face objects. In Experiment 1a participants took longer to decide that an array of objects contained a butterfly target when a face appeared as one of the distracting items than when the face did not appear in the array. This irrelevant face effect was eliminated when...

Objectives: Despite the substantial loss of natural forest in the Bosomkese Forest Reserve, little is known on the effects of the massive habitat loss and degradation on forest biota. The study therefore assessed the effects of anthropogenic activities on butterfly species composition and abundance in the Bosomkese Forest reserve in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana. Methodology and Results: The ...

Previous studies show that the position of centre of body mass (cmbody) and the ratio of flight muscle to total body mass (flight muscle ratio, FMR) are good predictors of flight speed and manoeuvrability in butterflies. However, cmbody, FMR, and related morphometric traits are strongly correlated phenotypically, making it difficult to identify the causal determinants of flight performance. By ...

Large conspicuous eyespots have evolved in multiple taxa and presumably function to thwart predator attacks. Traditionally, large eyespots were thought to discourage predator attacks because they mimicked eyes of the predators' own predators. However, this idea is controversial and the intimidating properties of eyespots have recently been suggested to simply be a consequence of their conspicuo...

Some eyespots are thought to deflect attack away from the vulnerable body, yet there is limited empirical evidence for this function and its adaptive advantage. Here, we demonstrate the conspicuous ventral hindwing eyespots found on Bicyclus anynana butterflies protect against invertebrate predators, specifically praying mantids. Wet season (WS) butterflies with larger, brighter eyespots were e...

The ant-tended Australian butterfly, Jalmenus evagoras, has been a model system for studying the ecology and evolution of mutualism. A phylogeographic analysis of mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase I sequences from 242 butterflies (615 bp) and 66 attendant ants (585 bp) from 22 populations was carried out to explore the relationship between ant association and butterfly population structure. ...

Indicator taxa are often proposed as efficient ways of identifying conservation priorities, but the correlation between putative indicators and other taxa has not been adequately tested. We examined whether a popular indicator taxon, the butterflies, could provide a useful surrogate measure of diversity in a closely related but relatively poorly known group, the moths, at a local scale relevant...

Wing and body kinematics of free cruising flight are described for 37 species of Panamanian butterflies ranging over two orders of magnitude in body mass. Butterflies exhibit considerable diversity in body and wing shape, but morphological design is, in general, isometric. Wing loading and mean body diameter show positive allometry. The cruising flight of butterflies is characterized by low win...