The lemon butterfly announces to alert viewers that spring is very close
What we usually know as a butterfly is nothing more than the adult state (image) of an order of insects known as Lepidoptera, a name made up of the combination of the Greek words Llopis (scale) and pteron (wing).
These animals, after bees, are the most numerous and important pollinators in nature. With their nomadic and erratic journeys, while indefatigable, they appear to us as heralds of dreams and hopes.
It is estimated that there are some 165,000 species of butterflies on the entire planet, with an average weight between 0.005 and 0.006 grams, and a size that ranges between three millimeters, for the smallest specimens, and thirty centimeters, for the largest. (Ornithoptera alexandrae).
The herald of spring
Butterflies usually have a very short life, the lemon tree (Gonopterys Cleopatra) being an exception that confirms the rule. It is an elegant, aristocratic Lepidoptera with disconcerting movements, it is large – between 5 and 6 cm wingspan – and brightly colored. Its habitat is in Europe, Asia, and North Africa.
The caterpillar stage of lemon trees is green or yellowish, which is an excellent camouflage to go unnoticed on its food plants, and its body is elongated or cylindrical, with a small head without spines. They feed mainly on buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus) and buckthorn (Frangula Alnus).
The chrysalis takes place on the plant itself, remaining fixed with silk threads, the eggs hatch in July and the adults can live until May of the following year. Once the adult or imago phase is reached, it is one of the longest-lived species of all butterflies.
In summer their presence is barely noticeable, they usually remain at rest during the summer, making short flights in the autumn months in search of a place where they can winter until the arrival of spring.
The lemon trees are very early and some begin to be volanderas at the end of February or the beginning of March. The reason they raise their wings so quickly is that it gives them a huge evolutionary advantage since insect-eating songbirds don’t return from their wintering grounds until mid-April. These butterflies, being brightly colored, would be very attractive and easy prey for these birds.
Masters of disguise
The Gonopterys Cleopatra belongs to the Pieridae family, which has more than a thousand species throughout the world, fifty of which live in Europe. In our peninsula, the existence of at least twenty-four species has been verified.
The lemon butterfly presents a clear sexual dimorphism that allows the alert observer to differentiate them easily. The front of the wings of the male specimens is green, interspersed with yellowish tones, and with an orange spot in the cell of both wings, which does not appear in their female counterparts. Another distinctive feature that helps their differentiation is that females usually have a much paler greenish coloration.
Female lemon butterflies closely resemble cabbage butterflies, a poisonous Lepidoptera that birds often respect because of its toxic glucosinolate content. With this mimicry, the lemon tree warns its possible predators that they are not “fit for consumption”.
But what about the males? Aren’t they protected? It is very possible that yes, what appears to our eyes to have a different chromatism, to birds, thanks to their extraordinary sensitivity to color and their capture of ultraviolet light, appears to them to have a similar greenish hue. In other words, birds would have a harder time distinguishing between males and females, and thus differentiating them from the dreaded cabbage butterflies, than we would.
