- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Okay, where are they?
Shouldn't they be emerging soon?
They're in Davis and Suisun. Why not Vacaville?
We've been waiting--not so patiently after this long winter--for the reappearance of the showy Gulf Fritillary butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) on our passionflower vine (Passiflora).
On Saturday, March 26 (Easter weekend), a solo female fluttered into our yard and headed straight for the Passiflora. Not only did she reward us with our presence, but she laid several eggs, singly, on the leaves and tendrils. They're the size of a pinhead and look like pure gold. That's because they are.
Spring is a time of renewal, rejuvenation and rejoicing.
Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis who has monitored butterfly populations in Central California for more than four decades, saw his first Gulf Frit of the year on March 16 in Suisun. Read what he says about these brightly colored orange butterflies on his website.
Butterfly expert Greg Kareofelas, an associate at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, rescued a Gulf Frit larva from his Davis yard last winter and on March 17 watched the adult eclose from its chrysalis. Lately he's been on Butterfly Alert. He's spotted a number of Gulf Frits in his yard, including a female on March 26. His count includes other species as well, including a monarch and Western tiger swallowtails.
No monarch sightings for us yet, but one mourning cloak, two Western tiger swallowtails and two pipevine swallowtails.
Saturday's appearance of Mrs. Gulf Frit, however, was special. It was a day before Easter. Instead of a visit from the Easter Bunny delivering hen eggs, this was a visit from a Gulf Fritillary who graced us with several bonafide eggs. Her own.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
At first glance, it appeared to be a gnat circling our head.
Then it landed on our passionflower vine (Passiflora). It cooperatively stayed still for a photo (taken with a Nikon D800 mounted with a 105mm macro lens) and then returned to its nest, a hole in the ground.
A tiny bee, but what bee?
"A female sweat bee in the genus Lasioglossum, subgenus Evylaeus which are the tiny black species in this large and diverse genus," said native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, distinguished emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis, who maintains an office in the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility.
Lasioglossum, found worldwide, is the largest of all bee genera, containing more than 1700 species in numerous subgenera.
Bee identification is so intricate. This little sweat bee is similar to Halictus. "Lasioglossum differ from Halictus in the position of the hair bands on the abdomen," Thorp noted. "Halictus have well defined hair bands that are at the apex (end) of each tergite. In Lasioglossum, when hair bands are present, they are at the bases of the tergites."
Thorp is a veteran instructor at The Bee Course, affiliated with the American Natural History. An annual course held at the Southwestern Research Station, Portal, Ariz., it's offered for conservation biologists, pollination ecologists and other biologists who want to gain greater knowledge of the systematics and biology of bees, according to the organizers, Jerome Rozen Jr., American Museum of Natural History, and Ronald McGinley of Roseville.
Many UC students and faculty have attended the course, which draws participants throughout the world. This year's course runs from Aug. 22 to Sept. 1.
Want to apply to attend The Bee Course? Applications are now being sought. Check out the website for more information.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No matter how many we see or how often we see them, we can't get enough of the Gulf Frits.
That would be the Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae), a brightly colored orangish-reddish butterfly with silver-spangled underwings. It's also known as the passion butterfly because its host plant is the passionflower vine (Passiflora).
Depending on what you see first--the brilliant orange or the gleaming silver--the Gulf Frit appears to be two butterflies. Two dazzling butterflies.
Butterfly guru Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at te University of California, Davis, calls it a "dazzling bit of the New World Tropics...introduced into southern California in the 19th Century --we don't know how-- and (it) was first recorded in the Bay Area before 1908, though it seems to have become established there only in the 1950s."
We've observed the Gulf Frit almost year around in Yolo and Solano counties. Once we saw it laying an egg on Christmas Day in Vacaville (Solano County). What a gift!
As the year slips to a close, and spring beckons, we anxiously await the welcoming sight of a fluttering butterfly touching down on a gently swaying blossom. Like a Gulf Frit on a long-stemmed Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).
The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sex in the afternoon. On the passionflower vine.
That's what happened today on the Passiflora (see images below). Coming soon, more Gulf Fritillaries.
The Gulf Frit (Agraulis vanillae), an orangish-reddish butterfly of the family Nymphalidae, is as spectacular as it is showy. Its silver-spangled underwings absolutely glow in the sunlight.
However, much misinformation surrounds it.
A recent article in a Bay Area publication indicated that it's been around the Bay Area since the 1950s. It's actually been around much earlier than that. It was first documented in Southern California in 1870s, according to noted butterfly researcher Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, who has been monitoring the butterflies of central California for four decades.
"It first appeared in the vicinity of San Diego in the 1870s,” he says. “It spread through Southern California in urban settings and was first recorded in the Bay Area about 1908. It became a persistent breeding resident in the East and South Bay in the 1950s and has been there since.”
Shapiro says it “apparently bred in the Sacramento area and possibly in Davis in the 1960s, becoming extinct in the early 1970s, then recolonizing again throughout the area since 2000.”
Have you ever wondered why the scientific name of the species is vanillae? That was an error traced back to the illustrator. German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) knew butterflies--she reared them--but she took some artistic liberties when it came to horticulture.
Merian drew the Gulf Frit on a vanilla orchid, and scientists assumed that this was the host plant. Not so. Passiflora is the host plant. "Johannes Fabricius knew that the bug eats Passiflora and tried to rename it passiflorae," wrote Shapiro in a 2008 edition of the Journal of the Lepitoperists Society.
It never happened. That's why we call it Agraulis vanillae and not Agraulis passiflorae.
But it is nicknamed the "passion butterfly."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
How can you hate a caterpillar and love a butterfly?
You can't.
Some gardeners so love their passionflower vine (Passiflora) that they squirm at the thought of a caterpillar munching it down to nothing.
But that's what caterpillars do. The Gulf Fritillary butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) lays its eggs on its host plant, the passionflower vine, the eggs develop into larvae or caterpillars, and the caterpillars into Gulf Frits.
Our passionflower vine--which we planted specifically for the Gulf Frits--is now a skeleton. The caterpillars ate all the leaves, the flowers and the stems. What was once a flourishing green plant looks like a criss-cross of brown sticks.
Comedian George Carlin supposedly said "The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity."
And architect-author-designer-inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller observed: "There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."
And someone named John Grey offered this poetic comment:
"And what's a butterfly? At best,
He's but a caterpillar, at rest."
So, it is. Take a look at the Gulf Frit caterpillar and then check out the Gulf Frit butterfly.
Yes, a hungry caterpillar turned into a magnificent butterfly.
How can you hate a caterpillar?
You can't.