Friday, June 22, 2007

American Snout (Libytheana carinenta)
June 14, 2007


I was photographing this American Snout when it moved to a different plant and I noticed it appeared to be laying an egg. After the adult butterfly moved on, I went back to the leaf and searched and found an egg.

Some butterfly species only lay a single egg at a time, others lay several eggs, while others lay dozens of eggs in a cluster. Some of the factors which contribute to laying large egg clusters are a relative scarcity of appropriate plants on which to lay eggs, opting for the benefits of gregarious caterpillars, or a lower population density which results in a butterfly needing to spend more time locating a mate.

1 comment:

Silvia said...

Just wanted to thank you for id'ing my red-spotted purple for me--I've added you to my list of "blogs I read" on my blog.