Transform Your Garden with Pollinators and Pest Control

20 Mar 2025

Blue tiger butterfly on a pink zinnia flower with green background

Butterfly Effect: The Purpose of Butterflies

About 75 million years ago, butterflies evolved from moths. These butterflies shifted from night feeding to daytime feeding. This allowed them to take advantage of nectar from flowers and evolve alongside bees. Butterflies are wonderful pollinators whether they hang out locally and overwinter or migrate over hundreds of miles.

Unraveling the Life Cycle of a Butterfly

Butterflies are one of the first insects to grab a kid’s attention and teach them about how insects progress through life. It is the first glimpse of how wildly different and seemingly unrelated the different stages of their life are. The step by step life cycle of a butterfly is a beautiful illustration of the process of metamorphosis. Since all butterflies come from caterpillars, do all caterpillars turn into butterflies? We’ll explore their life cycle to learn more.

Step-by-Step Life Cycle: From Caterpillar to Butterfly

Butterflies undergo complete metamorphosis which means they progress through the following stages:

Egg (typically small round balls clumped together on a leaf)
Larva (caterpillar)
pupa (cocoon)
Adult (butterfly) This is the stage that shows off the beautiful butterfly wings that gain adoration.

The image depicts the life cycle of a butterfly, showcasing its transformation from caterpillar to winged adult. The illustration features a green caterpillar with colorful spots, a chrysalis, and a monarch butterfly with vibrant orange and black wings, all set against a beige background with a circular arrangement of leaves and twigs.

Identifying Common Butterfly Types: Wings, Larvae, and More

There are more than 17,000 species of butterflies. Some of the more common ones include Monarchs, Swallowtails, cabbage whites, spring azures, and clouded sulphur butterflies. You can identify them by comparing the markings on their wings with a chart of known species.

Butterfly wing color comes from different pigments and structure in the scales that cover their wings. The colors may serve as camouflage, protection from predators, or mating purposes depending on the species.

In addition to their wings, you can identify butterflies by their larval stage. You will need details such as color patterns, the geography where they are found, and what kind of plant they were found on.

Butterflies feed on nectar from flowers that they ingest through a straw-like apparatus called a proboscis. Interestingly, the taste receptors are not in the proboscis but in their feet.

Common Butterfly Questions:

There are many interesting questions we can ask about butterflies. For example, do butterflies sleep? Not the same way as people do, but they do roost at night. Or, how do you tell a butterfly from a moth? The easiest way is to look at the antennae. Butterflies typically have thin antennae with a club while moths tend to have feathery or comb like antennae often in the shape of a leaf.

Do All Caterpillars Turn into Butterflies?

The image depicts a small, dark brown caterpillar with a rounded head and green eyes, positioned on a textured surface featuring a diamond pattern. The caterpillar's body is adorned with blue speckles, and it rests on a light brown surface with a darker brown diamond pattern, which appears to be a rug or mat placed on a wooden floor.

Not all caterpillars turn into butterflies. Some turn into moths. Only by learning the identifying characteristics of the individual species will you be able to know what it will turn into. A lot of people think that moths are the bland and boring colors while caterpillars are pretty, but many moths are just as pretty as butterflies.

How Long Is a Caterpillar a Caterpillar?

Butterfly larvae are called caterpillars. The amount of time a butterfly spends in caterpillar stage will depend on various factors such as species, temperatures, and the type of host plant. A few examples include:

monarch 7-17 days
black swallow tail 10-30 days
cabbage white 14-21 days

So, how long is a caterpillar a caterpillar? It is typically 1-4 weeks. The purpose of butterflies is to survive and reproduce. By spending a small amount of time providing food to a larval butterfly, the plant earns the future reproductive assistance of butterfly pollinators. Butterflies and the environment are knitted together in a beneficial relationship.

Creating a Butterfly-Friendly Garden: Tips for Attracting Butterfly Pollinators

Butterflies and gardens go together as a matched pair. You can influence the types of butterflies that will visit your garden by the plants you include in the landscape.

Great spangled fritillary butterflies are attracted to nectar producing plans such as milkweed, violets, and coneflowers.
American copper butterflies are drawn to Butterfly Weed, Mountainmints, and Mistflowers.
Eastern tailed blue butterflies like small flowers that grow low to the ground with short floral tubes

Manage Pests While Protecting Butterflies – Contact Rove Pest Control Today!

Fortunately butterflies are aerial pests that behave quite differently from typical structural pests. This allows for control measures to be applied that will target the creatures you don’t want while allowing the beneficial insects to flourish. Reach out to the pollinator experts at Rove Pest Control today to learn how you can knock out pests and help the beneficial insects.