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California oak moth

Monarch butterflies

Insects

Spiders

Animals

Florida 2009

Spanish moth

Xanthopastis timais
Flamingo, Everglades National Park
March 25, 2009

heart-felt close-up of wing

Flamingo, Everglades National Park
March 25, 2009

Florida 2011

Butterfly

Myakka Lemur Reserve
August 23, 2011

Tussock moth

Tussock moth caterpillar on thumb

Giant caterpillar invasion of Stanford Quad

Caterpillar on the attack

Tussock marauding

Tussock up close and personal

Splendor in the grass
Colias eurytheme

Some comments per Dr. Carol Boggs, butterfly aficionado:
A female Colias eurytheme, the alfalfa butterfly. Larval host plants are alfalfa, vetch and various other legumes - but not the purple-flowered legume that's blooming in places on the Stanford dish. It can't diapause, so is a lowland species. You can find it in huge numbers in Central Valley alfalfa fields in summer/fall; it hangs out probably on native hosts, developing slowly, over the winter. It seems to be much more numerous in the Bay Area itself in spring in recent years. Females come in two morphs - yellow/orange like the males, or "alba" (a dominant autosomal sex-limited gene) which results in a white phenotype, caused by re-routing lots of N-containing compounds away from the yellow pigmentation and into reproduction/faster development and the like particularly at low temperatures. The Colias is the study animal of Dr. Ward Watt at Stanford.

Wing things

Flutterby on hibiscus

Butter colored butter

More butter

A head of his time

Winging it.

Finger ornament

Moth

Catepillar

Other relevant pages

12 of the Most Fascinating Butterflies

Last modified: April 14, 2019
Created: April 13, 2007
Contact: siegelr@stanford.edu