A Students Guide to Butterflies
The only goal in life for an adult butterfly is to reproduce. The males look for females to inseminate. The females lay eggs. Within the males' abdomen are the sperm producing organs. When the male begins to mate with a female, a set of claspers at the end of the abdomen will open and clamp down on the female's abdomen. Butterflies mate facing in opposite directions with their abdomens attached.
The penis enters the female at the same location where the eggs come out. When the male ejaculates, the semen enters a small storage pouch inside the females abdomen, called a spermathecae. After mating, the female has about 100 eggs inside her and a pouch full of the male spermatozoa. When ready to deposit her eggs, she will perform a kind of self-fertilization. When she places an egg on the host-plant, as the egg is passing out of her ovipositor, it will pass this pouch. At that instant, one spermatozoa will fertilize the egg and determine its sex. When the egg is first placed on the leaf, it was fertilized less than a second before.
The fact that the female has the ability to decide when to lay the eggs is an interesting and important point. Since the eggs are deposited on the host plant, the female is able to pick the most favorable spot to lay her eggs. If she did not have this self-fertilization ability, she would be forced to lay her eggs all at once, perhaps jepordizing the health of some of her offspring.
A typical female butterfly will lay about 100 eggs in her lifetime. Some species lay their eggs gregariously (in clusters). Other species lay their eggs individually on widely dispersed plants. One school of thought argues for survival in numbers, while the other takes the perspective, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Both approaches are valid, but only just sufficiently to ensure the survival of the species.
Of the 100 or so eggs that may be laid, only 2% should be expected to survive to become healthy and reproductive adult butterflies. This figure is reasonable since in the aggregate one egg will replace the female and the other the male. The other 98% will fall by the wayside in the course of their development as eggs, larvae, pupae and emerging adults.
The reasons for this high mortality rate are several. The most important causes include climatic conditions (wind, drought and rain); diseases caused by virus and bacteria; and predators. See also Defense Mechanisms in this guide.
This information is provided by Evan Fitzgerald, who was an intern at The Butterfly Farm in 1999. Evan graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Science in May 1998. Evan can be reached at: evan@butterflyfarm.co.cr
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