Urania Madagascar. Description and history of discovery

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:42

According to many, Urania Madagascar is the most beautiful butterfly in the world. It lives only on the island of Madagascar and is active only during the day. Its caterpillars can only feed on one type of plant. For a long time, her whereabouts were unknown.

Discovery history

The story of the discovery of the Urania Madagascar butterfly is very unusual. Once upon a time, an English captain named May from the town of Hammersmith brought from China a dried specimen of a hitherto unknown butterfly of incredible beauty. And in 1773, this butterfly was described by an English entomologist named Drew Drury.

Mr. Drury assigned this species to the genus Papilio and named it Papilio rhipheus. The Chinese origin of the species was not further confirmed. For a long time, the habitat of this butterfly was unknown, but later scientists found that the described species was endemic to the island of Madagascar and was not found anywhere else.

In 1823, the scientist Jacob Huebner, Madagascar Urania (see photo below) was reassigned to the genus Chrysiridia croesus, which had the shape and color of the wings, similar to the described butterfly.

Closely related to this genus are two more from the Urania subfamily - Urania and Aclides. As a similarity of these three species, the same transition of caterpillars from feeding on plants from the genus Endospermum to the genus Omphalea is distinguished.

Description of the butterfly

Urania Madagascar delights with its brightness, unusual colors and intricate pattern of its wings. Interestingly, this species is distinguished by a mixed type of color, that is, the color is formed due to both pigments and light interference.

The main background color of the wings of the Madagascar Urania is black, over which multi-colored strokes of blue, red, green and yellow shades are scattered in a chaotic and asymmetric manner.

The asymmetric color of the wings is formed due to exposure to high temperatures, when the butterfly is still in the chrysalis stage. This fact has been proven experimentally. The scientists placed the pupae in refrigerators. Butterflies of Urania Madagascar (the photo is presented in the article), hatched from them, were completely differently colored.

Wingspan - on average from 70 to 90 mm, but can reach 110 mm in large individuals. Differences in gender are poorly developed. Females are noticeably larger than males. The body of the butterfly is thin, laterally flattened. The chest below is pubescent with orange hairs. The eyes of the insect are large, round and bare. The proboscis is naked, with well-developed labial palps. Flagellar antennae thickened towards the middle. On the second segment of the abdomen is the tympanicmachine.

Description of the caterpillar

The caterpillar of Urania Madagascar has a yellowish-white color with black spots and red legs. The front end of her body is painted black and has a brown head with black spots.

Immediately after hatching, young caterpillars feed only on the interveinal tissues of the leaf, avoiding poisonous juice. Four days later, they begin to eat fruits, flowers, petioles and young stems of omphalia. When moving, the caterpillar secretes silk threads, allowing it to climb back when it falls.

During their development, the caterpillars of the Madagascar butterfly cover four stages of maturation, which fall on two months of the dry season and a couple of weeks of the rainy season.

Forage plants

The caterpillars of the described butterfly are able to feed on only four species of plants from the Euphorbiaceae family or Euphorbiaceae. Thickets of these plants are not found throughout Madagascar, so the caterpillars are found in parts of the island separated from each other.

Interestingly, the plant of the genus Omphalia, which caterpillars feed on, contains juice in its leaves that attracts many other insects. Among them are predatory wasps, but they can only threaten larvae that are at the earliest stages of development. But ants, which very actively protect omfalia from other insects, for some reason do not touch urania caterpillars.

The Urania Madagascar butterfly feeds on the nectar of tea, eucalyptus, mango, etc., and is distributed throughout the island.

All plants on which Urania butterflies feed have white or yellowish-white flowers, which indicates the importance of the role of vision in the life of winged insects.

Reproduction

The female Urania Madagascar lays eggs in groups of 60-110 pieces on the lower, and occasionally on the upper side of the omphalia leaf. The eggs are dome-shaped with protruding ribs, of which there are 16, 17, 18 pieces.

The larvae prepare cocoons from silk threads for 10 hours. Then it takes about 30 hours to prepare the caterpillar for transformation. The process of metamorphosis itself can take no more than 10 minutes, but the butterfly emerges from the cocoon only after 17-23 days.

The natives of the island - the Malagasy - called Urania Madagascar a royal spirit or a noble butterfly. They believe that the souls of dead people reincarnate into butterflies, therefore, by harming this beautiful insect, an evil person harms his ancestors. I wish every person on the planet would treat all living things the way Malagasy treat their butterflies!