Butterfly "Torture Chambers"

[mbpi at juno.com]

Tut, tut, Alex...let's not overstate the spider predation (!)

I worked in an outdoor butterfly tent last summer, and I can assure you
the spider predation was nowhere near the proportion of butterfly demise
from "old age."  Parasitizing wasps of the pupae, which were hung in
outdoor emergence chambers, were far more common...and even that was a
"seasonal" phenomena that lasted about a month.

As for dead butterfly carcasses laying around:  granted, in nature, one
doesn't encounter dead butterflies very often, unless they are "road
kills."  Unfortunately, this leads the general public to believe that
butterflies "live forever," rather than relatively short lifespans.  A
good portion of my job was to pick up the butterfly carcasses and put
them in a "cemetery jar"...a novelty that I coined for the children that
came through the tent and discovered a dead butterfly.  As a matter of
fact, once they got past the initial shock that the butterfly had "died,"
and understood that they were "short-lived," they were more than willing
assistants at helping me fill the "cemetery jar" (!)  What they didn't
realize was the heavy mortality of butterflies to predation from other
organisms...save for the occasional spider, and parasitoid wasps.

I'd say there was a great deal of value in observing this sort of
phenomena, even if it was essentially contrived!

Mary Beth Prondzinski
Chicago, IL
On Fri, 29 Mar 2002 12:19:38 -0500 "Grkovich, Alex"
<agrkovich at tmpeng.com> writes:
> Try visiting the place here in Massachusetts north of Boston (I 
> forget the
> name of the town), for example, and just have it look around. It'll 
> turn
> your stomach.
> 
> I have for some time wondered how one controls the spiders without
> "controlling" the butterflies.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:        Neil Jones [SMTP:neil at NWJONES.DEMON.CO.UK]
> > Sent:        Friday, March 29, 2002 10:40 AM
> > To:        leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> > Subject:        Re: Butterfly house?
> > 
> > On Friday 29 March 2002 12:53 pm, you wrote:
> > > They're torture chambers for butterflies. I've never seen such 
> evidence
> > of
> > > predation on butterflies by spiders as inside a "butterfly 
> house"; of
> > > course, "collecting" is not allowed inside, is it?
> > >
> > 
> > I'm not sure that this is valid.
> > 
> > 1. You would see more spider predation where there were a lot more 
> 
> > butterflies. This isn't evidence that it is higher. It may just be 
> a 
> > manifestation of desity dependent predation.
> > 
> > 2. I make a point of visiting butterfly houses where ever I 
> travel
> > Only once did I really encounter a place where spiders had been 
> allowed to
> > 
> > flourish. There are effective control measures and these are 
> usually used
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk http://www.butterflyguy.com/
> > NOTE NEW WEB ADDRESS
> > "At some point I had to stand up and be counted. Who speaks for 
> the
> > butterflies?" Andrew Lees - The quotation on his memorial at 
> Crymlyn Bog
> > National Nature Reserve
> > 
> >  
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