At Kibale, there is a long term butterfly research project going on. Or ecology class had the opportunity to tag along with the researchers for a day as they censused fruit eating butterflies. There are beautiful butterflies in Uganda, and while the most common fruit eating butterfly (B. smithi) was good lucking, but didn't have spectacular colours, some, such as the African leaf butterfly had gorgeous colours. The team was very knowledgeable and had many different projects going on including mark and recapture projects to learn about the life history of some species of butterflies.
The top picture is how you sex some species of butterflies. For the one genus, the bicyclus, brushes between the wings (or lack of in some cases) can be used to determine the sex. It is hypothesized these brushes are used to attract mates (secondary sexual characteristic)
No comments:
Post a Comment