Why nature decided to make butterflies so colourful defeats me. I can understand the role colours may play in predator protection, easy recognition among conspecific individuals, reproductive behaviour and all sorts of other properties that colours may have but, still, why being so outrageous with butterflies?

So, you would think that Nature would have been content with allocating them the whole colour spectrum? Not so, some of them have also been numbered! These are some of the members of the Diaethria genus and I do not think that this was done to help the taxonomists!

You know from earlier posts that the Yungas region where our farm is located host a great many colourful butterfly and moth species and to take a walk on a sunny summer day is a true challenge to your eyes!

I have probably photographed over one hundred butterflies (and perhaps double that number of moths) and I had covered the butterflies issue earlier in this blog [1]. Despite having seen most of the available butterflies, I am still surprised at what I find!

One of the posts deals with one of the numbered butterflies: the 80 (or 08) , depending how you look at it. It is known as Diaethria candrena.

Very recently we briefly saw a new and strikingly iridescent butterfly flying very fast and we soon lost it. Luckily the following day we found it again and, with lots of patience, I managed to take a few reasonable pictures of it. To my surprise it also carried a number: 89 (or 98) and I believe it to be Diaethria neglecta, also known as the 89 butterfly!

I then learnt that the numerals which appear on the underside hindwings of these butterflies are present in the twelve species of Diaethria but vary in colour and shapes, some of them do not show recognizable numbers.

There is also the 88 butterfly that would complete the numbered ones: Diathria clymena. I have not yet found it although I believe that it is also in the area. To find the third butterfly numbered by Nature adds another motive to continue with my daily walks.

 

[1] https://bushsnobinafrica.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/flying-gems/ and https://bushsnobinafrica.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/80-zig-zag/