Queen Butterfly Research Paper

The Queen butterfly (Danaus gilippus), is a communal and a all year-round butterfly in South Texas. It is in the family of Nymphalidae, which is the largest family of butterflies in the world. Closely resembling its cousin the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), it is smaller-sized and painted a darker shade of orange, and has two rows of white spots on the black borders of their wings. An immediate distinction between the Queen and the rest of the Danaus genus is that it has three antennae instead of just two sprouting from its head.¹ ² ³ It resides mostly in the very southern part of the United States as well as southern. It has been found frequently in places like the tropical lowlands of the West Indies and Central America to Argentina, although they can
That means that both species are poisonous and have very similar markings. This way, both species have a much lesser chance of getting eaten by a bird. The Queen butterfly usually gets eaten during its larvae and caterpillar stage, but it does also get eaten during its butterfly stage because of its colours. However, the amount of birds that eat them are quite small since the butterfly contains a toxin called cardiac glycosides from the milkweeds that they consume, but this also depends on the place of where the butterflies are. Different areas of the Queen butterfly have different levels of the toxin and so the amount of birds preying on them also vary.⁷ This toxin is quite deadly and will make any predator avoid it at once after it takes one bite, as it is very distasteful and quite poisonous. Although it is unlikely that the bird will die, it will get extremely sick and learn to forever avoid the bright colours of the Queen butterfly or any other similar-looking animal.⁵ ² Here is a simple food web illustrating the niche of a Queen butterfly in its ecosystem. The producers in this small food web are the milkweeds and dogbanes. The primary consumer is the Queen butterfly which feeds