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Aug 10, 2012 · How does a caterpillar rearrange itself into a butterfly? What happens inside a chrysalis or cocoon? First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues.
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- Overview
- Eggs and larvae
- Pupation
- Adulthood
- See photos of beautiful butterfly patterns
- Why such an elaborate life cycle?
This incredible transformation has a purpose: Allowing insects at different life stages to avoid competing for food.
The chrysalis of a tiger clearwing butterfly hangs at the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium in New Orleans.
Butterflies are perhaps most famous for the process by which a plump little caterpillar transforms into a winged work of art. But they’re not unique in going through this drastic life change, called complete metamorphosis, or holometabolism.
A whopping 75 percent of known insects—among them bees, beetles, flies, and moths—develop in four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Most striking about complete metamorphosis is how different the larva looks and behaves from the adult. (Watch a time-lapse video of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.)
Nearly all insects start out as eggs and then hatch into larvae. Caterpillars are a type of larvae that many people are familiar with, but others resemble worms or tiny insects, as occurs in ladybugs (aka ladybirds).
A larva’s main job is to grow and molt, a process triggered by hormones. Each stage of molting is called an instar, and some insects molt up to five times before moving onto the next stage. (Read about a venomous caterpillar with a toxic “toupee.”)
Larvae eat as if there’s no tomorrow because, in a way, there isn’t. Metamorphosis changes almost everything.
In insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis, the larvae are called nymphs. Many, such as grasshoppers, look and behave much like tiny versions of the adult insects. Others, such as leafhoppers, look a bit different from adults, with small wing buds. But these insects eat the same things as adults and move the same way, going through multiple molts until they mature. Cicadas can take 17 years to metamorphose into adulthood, spending most of that time underground.
After shedding their final instar, insects that experience complete metamorphosis become pupae. In some cases, pupae enclose themselves inside a hard cocoon, or chrysalis, which butterflies and moths make from their own silk. Once complete, they’ll hang upside down from a perch on a silken thread.
Others deploy different techniques. After a worm-like larval stage of nearly two years, Hercules beetles of the American tropics store up enough feces to form sturdy cocoons.
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WATCH A HERCULES BEETLE METAMORPHOSE
See a time-lapse video of a beetle growing from larvae into one of the biggest flying insects in the world.
It's odd that these giant beetles make a cocoon at all, explains Richard Jones, an author and entomologist in the U.K not affiliated with a university or organization.
After emerging from its chrysalis, a newly minted butterfly may look wilted—its wings are wet and need a couple of hours to expand before taking flight. Hercules beetles emerge with their spectacular horns, and caddisflies cut their way out of their found creations and swim to the surface for one final molt before flying off.
Generally, adult insects don’t live long—dragonflies, for example, live only about a month, but before that, they’re in their larval state for around three years.
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A neglected eighty-eight butterfly (Diaethria neglecta) in Brazil’s Pantanal displays the design of lines and dots that gave it its unusual common name.
Neglected Eighty-Eight Butterfly
A neglected eighty-eight butterfly (Diaethria neglecta) in Brazil’s Pantanal displays the design of lines and dots that gave it its unusual common name.
Photograph by Joel Sartore
Metamorphosis is ultimately a successful strategy because juveniles and adults eat different things. Caterpillars munch nutrient-rich leaves to enable all that developmental change, and butterflies just need to sip nectar (essentially sugary water).
For species with such different developmental forms, “you’ve suddenly created a competitive-free space,” says Katy Prudic, an entomologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Parents and offspring aren’t competing for resources, allowing both life stages to develop independently. (Read about a butterfly that can fly 2,500 miles.)
May 14, 2013 · One team analysed the caterpillar of the stunning blue morpho just before it started metamorphosis and a week into the process. They analysed the structure of the tracheae—the network of...
Nov 6, 2022 · There are four phases in the entire metamorphosis process for butterflies and moths: the egg, the larva, also referred to as a caterpillar, the pupa, and the adult stages. Egg Stage. The egg stage is the first stage where the caterpillar life cycle starts. On plants, the mature female butterfly lays her eggs.
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops including birth transformation or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation. [1] .
Jun 30, 2017 · A simple procedure on a caterpillar gives a unique look inside the formation of color in a butterfly wing.
The series of changes in shape, form, and activities that a butterfly goes through during its lifetime is the life cycle, while the complex biological process involved in the transformation from caterpillars to adult butterflies is called metamorphosis.
