Monarch Butterfly in Flight #1
by J McCombie
Title
Monarch Butterfly in Flight #1
Artist
J McCombie
Medium
Photograph - Untouched
Description
This piece has been featured in the FAA Groups: "BUGs BUGs and more BUGs", and "Farms and Barns and Farm Animal and Tractors and Fields".
One of the disappearing pollinators of farmers' crops, Monarchs are powerful and beloved insects, symbols of resilience in urban environments and a familiar sight to herald summer in rural areas. In Mexico, their presence has an even deeper meaning. Millions return to Mexico on Nov. 1 and 2, el Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — when tradition holds the monarchs are the returning spirits of loved ones who have died. It only makes it so sad to have recently had this beautiful and iconic butterfly put on the Endangered Species List.
Monarch butterflies embark on a marvelous migratory phenomenon. They travel between 1,200 and 2,800 miles or more from the northeast United States, and southeast Canada to the mountain forests in central Mexico, where they find the right climate conditions to hibernate from the beginning of November to mid-March. The monarch butterfly is known by scientists as Danaus plexippus, which in Greek literally means "sleepy transformation." The name evokes the species' ability to hibernate and metamorphize. Adult monarch butterflies possess two pairs of brilliant orange-red wings, featuring black veins and white spots along the edges. Males, who possess distinguishing black dots along the veins of their wings, are slightly bigger than females. Each adult butterfly lives only about four to five weeks.
The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (Danaus plexippus) is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black-veined brown. It is often consider to be amongst the most familiar of North American butterflies. It is often considered an iconic pollinator species, although it is not an especially effective pollinator of milkweeds. Its wings feature an easily recognizable black, orange, and white pattern, with a wingspan of 8.9–10.2 cm (3+1⁄2–4 in). A Müllerian mimic, the viceroy butterfly, is similar in color and pattern, but is markedly smaller and has an extra black stripe across each hindwing.
The name "monarch" is believed to have been given in honor of King William III of England, as the butterfly's main color is that of the king's secondary title, Prince of Orange. The monarch was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae of 1758 and placed in the genus Papilio. In 1780, Jan Krzysztof Kluk used the monarch as the type species for a new genus, Danaus.
Uploaded
August 3rd, 2022
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