A Study on Attitude of Butterflies at Forage on Diverse Morphological Flowers

Abstract

The present study is aimed on to discern the etiquette of landing of butterflies on diverse morphologically different flowers and their wing positions on flowers. 30 butterfly species were observed while landing on flowers on fine weather days. Butterflies when they scavenge on flowers, keep their wings in diverse positions. The observations are conversed under two heads - (a) wing positions during scavenge i.e forage and (b) Model of alighting. Flowers are categorized into 7 types on basis of position of their essential organs in relation to other floral parts.  Based on flower structure and position of butterflies land on the flowers, contact of different body parts of the butterfly with the essential organs of the flowers varies from species to species.

The present study demonstrates that the butterflies are generalists since they visited different flower species and supports the costly information hypothesis.