Butterfly pieris rapae is the most common species of butterfly in the family Butterflyidae, one of the most common butterflies in the city in spring and summer, and it is also the earliest butterfly that many people have an impression of when they were young. The butterfly is easy to recognize, medium size, the front and back of the wings are white, there are one or two dark spots, the forewings are black at the apex, sometimes there are conspicuous yellow lines on the edges of the hindwings, or the entire reverse side is the kind of pale yellow that has been exposed to the sun for a long time. Joy in the open air to fly to visit the flowers.
Butterfly (urbanbutterflygarden.co.uk)
It is widely distributed throughout Asia, Europe and Africa. Its larvae feed on cruciferous plants, and the genus Brassica in this family accounts for most of the vegetables eaten by humans, such as greens, cabbage, rapeseed, turnips, and so on. Since the day humans began cultivating brassica plants, the butterfly has been an important agricultural pest and has been linked to humans. The butterfly was accidentally introduced to North America in 1860 and spread rapidly, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic losses in agriculture each year. However, in English it has a very cute name "the small white".
ps: There is also "great white" in English (European pink butterfly pieris brassicae)
The larvae are commonly known as the green worm, the whole body is green, the dorsal line and valve line are yellow, and the whole body is densely covered with many small black spots and hairs.
Adult butterflies rely on the volatile mustard oil smell unique to cruciferous plants to find a host, laying a yellow oblong oval egg, and after the larva hatches, it will eat the egg shell first.
Butterfly larvae (galleryhip.com)
Butterfly larvae like to shoot a shot to change places, after eating in one place, instead of returning to the same place, they climb to other leaves, or climb to different places in the same leaf, which may be to avoid the adaptive behavior of predators that rely on visual hunting. The main natural enemy of the larvae is birds, and in addition to eating a meal to change places, the strange smell of mustard oil of the host plant will also provide it with some degree of protection. In addition to birds, parasitic insects are also its main enemies, such as cocoon bees, parasitic flies, etc., which will lay eggs on the young larvae of the butterfly and encroach on the host from the inside.
Cocoon bee larvae emerge from the larvae of the dead butterfly (entnemdept.ufl.edu)
Unlike the heavy taste of the butterfly family, the staple food of adult butterflies is nectar, and it is rare to touch unknown objects. They rely on their visual and olfactory senses to visit flowers, preferring blue, purple, and yellow flowers, and their compound eyes can distinguish the absorption rate of ultraviolet rays by each part of the flower, making it easy to find the part where the nectar is secreted. And the aromatic oil ingredients such as phenylacetaldehyde and phenethyl ethanol in the plant will also attract it, so that it can't wait to stretch out the mouthpart.
Butterfly Visiting Flowers (www.schoepfung.eu)
The courtship ritual of the male butterfly is to fly up and down in front of the female, quickly flapping its wings, if the female butterfly agrees to mate, she will fold her wings, if the female butterfly flies vertically, or spreads her wings to raise her abdomen, it means no agreement.
"No" pose (www.treknature.com)
In the city often haunted butterflies, there is also an oriental vegetable pink butterfly pieris canidia is easy to confuse with the vegetable powder butterfly, the wings of this species are also white background with black spots, the simple way to identify is the front outer edge of the hindwings of the oriental butterfly, that is, there are black spots at the end of the wing veins, and there are no black spots at the end of the wings of the butterfly.
The oriental butterfly has dark spots (www.insect-fans.com) dcw at the end of the outer edge of the hindwings
Another species that is easily confused with the larval stage of the vegetable powder butterfly is the small cabbage moth plutella xylostella, which is also known as the cabbage worm, and mainly feeds on cruciferous plants, usually occurring at the same time as the vegetable powder butterfly larvae, the most obvious difference is that it is not as hairy as the vegetable powder butterfly larvae, with only a few bristles.
Cabbage moth larvae (www.nbair.res.in)
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