Butterflies are translucent creatures. They often carry translucency through their wings, and this gives them several advantages.

It is rare to see on land creatures with this trait, and butterflies are one of only a few that exhibit it. A few studies suggest that translucency helps to hide them from predators and signal them not to eat them.

Nipam Patel, director of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has completed a several year study on this effect in butterflies, and reached some interesting conclusions. He and his various teams studied how this effect evolved over time, and how it benefits the biology of the creatures as a whole.

They noticed it as a main self defense mechanism that assisted in developing the warning colorations across the wings. They also noticed that butterflies share patterns between species. Some butterfly species are toxic, and this trait helps non toxic species blend in and confuse predators.

There is something called mimicry rings in the wings of these insects. These rings can overlap with translucent areas of the butterfly. Mimicry rings help showcase the butterfly’s color. They also found that butterfly wings do not have any glare coating, so on bright sunny days you can look right through them and see the mimicry rings. They hypothesize that the translucent makes the colors more visible when the creature is in direct view of predators. As well as more camouflage when the creature is in the shadows.

Their conclusions on how butterfly species evolved transparent wings was also a bit interesting. When comparing 123 Lepidoptera species together, they concluded that each species has evolved transparency independently.

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There also have been studies on individual species of butterflies. Particularly the Monarch. The Monarch butterfly is a well known insect in North America. They are endangered, and so understanding their threats is very important. Monarchs migrate through each season in North America, and through this migration, we lose more and more monarchs per year.

Scientists have identified 5 major potential threats to the Monarch Butterfly through use of observational, experimental, and simulation models. The first main threat is change in suitable abiotic environmental conditions. The second is deforestation. Next, exposure to contaminants and bacteria. Finally, species specific pathogens and parasitism.

Insects overall are on the decline. Due to global warming, invasive species have invaded areas they shouldn’t have, and thrived on insect populations. Forestry has disappeared, and over all the Earth has heated up.The more insect populations disappear, the more of an extinction downstream effect will happen.

Conservation management of insects is equally important as other land animals. The more we study insects, the better we can understand which parts of their habitats are at risk.

The Monarch Butterfly for example, has certain areas along its migration route that are more dangerous than others. The areas in Mexico that it travels to during the winter are at higher risk than areas in Northern America. This is mainly due to rainforest deforestation. This means fewer and fewer monarchs make it back each year.

Butterflies are also declining all throughout Europe as well. In the United Kingdom 8% of the insect species have become extinct since 1976. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, 20% of insect species have become extinct. For Europe there is something called The Red List which currently helps catalog endangered species. As of 2010, Butterflies made up 38 of the 482 European species on the list. The decline of these animals in Europe is directly linked to climate change, chemical pollution and habitat loss.

Butterflies are important to us as they are one of the few insects that humans are not repulsed by. So commonly they are used by scientists to help explain how important insect species are to the international ecosystem. The overall decline in insects in recent years will mean disaster for every single animal on Earth. So any tool we can use to get that point across is important. Even if it's another animal.

Butterflies also react quickly to any change in their environment. So their disappearance is often the first warning sign to something larger. Currently, there are many studies happening across Europe to monitor these creatures per year and species. These studies have been ongoing for many decades.

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One of the most studied butterflies in Indonesia has been the milkweed butterfly. These creatures are unusual as they tend to feed off of caterpillars from other butterflies, and drink them alive. These butterflies have tiny claws that they use to tear at their prey. Then they wait for the liquid to come out of the creature before consuming it. In turn, the caterpillars try to contort their bodies into a protective shape. However, this mostly never works. The species feeding off of them mostly is looking for the juices the caterpillar has consumed from plants. As often the plants consumed by caterpillars helps them produce pheromones to attract females. By consuming a caterpillar, a butterfly can double its pheromone amount. Studies documenting this have been published in the journal Ecology.

Most Milkweed butterflies are found in Asia. But four species of them live in North America. One being the Monarch butterfly. The Monarchs are not as aggressive as their counterparts. However, they will scratch at milkweed plants to try and digest the sap.


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Butterflies have evolved in many different ways since they first appeared millions of years ago. One trait their ancestors had was that they did not feed on plants. After studying 70 fossils of wings and scales in Germany, scientists were able to analyze more details of ancient Lepidoptera, and reach these conclusions. The fossils they studied were over 200 million years old, and are some of the oldest evidence of insects on Earth. They found that a lot of the fossils shared traits with Moths rather than today's Butterflies. It is estimated that the first ever flowers started growing around 140 million years ago, Butterflies had to cope with other food sources for around 60 million years. The researchers estimated that these creatures fed off gymnosperms instead. These are large flowerless, seed producing plants. These gymnosperms contained sugary droplets that would give these insects energy.

These researchers also hypothesized that lepidopterans evolved to have sucking proboscis instead of teeth. Their idea is that The late Triassic was extremely hot, and in turn lepidopterans may have developed proboscis instead of mouths to control moisture loss.