Tag Archives: butterfly farming

A friend of mine sent me an “educational wonderment email” with pics of this wee lovely–

Greta oto is a brush-footed butterfly, and is a member of the clearwing clade; its wings are transparent. Its most common English name is glasswing, and its Spanish name is espejitos, which means “little mirrors.” Indeed, the tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass. It is one of the more abundant clearwing species in its home range, which extends throughout Central America into Mexico. The opaque borders of its wings are dark brown sometimes tinted with red or orange, and its body is dark in color. Its wingspan is between 5.5 and 6 cm.

Adults inhabit the rainforest understory and feed on the nectar of a variety of tropical flowers. G. oto prefers to lay its eggs on plants of the tropical nightshade genus Cestrum. The silvery-gray caterpillars feed on these toxic plants and store the alkaloids in their tissues, making them distasteful to predators such as birds. They retain their toxicity in adulthood. The same alkaloids that make them poisonous also are converted into pheromones by the males, which use them to attract females.

G. oto adults also exhibit a number of interesting behaviors, such as long migrations and lekking among males.

I was amazed. Then I looked at more pics of them on the net and found these comments that cracked me up. Sort of sums it ALL ( you know the BIG all) up.

Erin 08 Dec 06

Isn’t it funny: houseflies have translucent wings, too, but nobody finds them noteworthy enough to blog about.

Anonymous Coward 13 Dec 06

Erin, why don’t you start your own blog and blog about translucent housefly wings?

I saw a mass of flowers ( crocus) blooming away today and my soul smiled. Winter is going. Soon. I have felt the shift in my body now. I am done with the hibernation.

I am getting out some seed catalogs tomorrow.