The Painted Lady—A Mystery Revealed

Observers have long admired colorful painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) and have wondered what happened to them at the end of each summer. Do they simply perish with the onset of cold weather? Fresh research reveals an extraordinary story. The butterflies make an annual journey between northern Europe and Africa.

Researchers combined results from sophisticated radar with thousands of sightings reported by volunteers across Europe. The results revealed that as the summer ends, millions of painted lady butterflies migrate south, mostly flying at an altitude of more than 1,600 feet (500 m)—therefore hardly ever seen by humans. The butterflies wait for favorable winds, which they ride at an average speed of 28 miles per hour (45 km/h) on the long trip to Africa. Their annual migration is up to 9,300 miles (15,000 km) long, beginning from as far north as the fringes of the Arctic and terminating as far south as tropical West Africa. The trip is almost double that of the North American monarch butterfly. It takes six successive generations of painted ladies to complete the round-trip.

“This tiny creature weighing less than a gram [0.04 oz] with a brain the size of a pin head and no opportunity to learn from older, experienced individuals, undertakes an epic intercontinental migration,” states Richard Fox, surveys manager at Butterfly Conservation. This insect was “once thought to be blindly led, at the mercy of the wind, into an evolutionary dead end in the lethal British winter,” Fox adds.

Yet this study “has shown Painted Ladies to be sophisticated travellers.”...:-)

The Lantern of the Photuris Firefly

THE lantern, or light organ, of a particular Photuris firefly is covered with jagged scales that dramatically enhance the brightness of the light that the insect produces. * Jagged scales Consider: Researchers have found that tiny scales on the lantern surface of some fireflies form a corrugated pattern, somewhat like overlapping shingles or tiles. The scales tilt up at one end by just 3 micrometers —less than one twentieth the thickness of a human hair. Yet this tiny tilt lets the lantern shine almost 50 percent more brightly than it would if the scales formed an even surface!

An Overview of Indonesia

Land Straddling the equator between Australia and continental Asia, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago. Most of its more than 17,500 islands feature rugged mountains and dense tropical forests. With more than 100 active volcanoes, it is also the most active volcanic region on earth.

PORTRAITS FROM THE PASTIgnaz Semmelweis

IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS may not be a household name, yet his work has benefited most modern families. Born in Buda (now Budapest), Hungary, he received his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1844. On taking up his post as assistant to a professor at the First Maternity Clinic of Vienna’s General Hospital in 1846, Semmelweis faced an appalling reality —more than 13 percent of the women giving birth there died from a disease called childbed fever. Various theories as to the cause of this disease had been proposed, yet no one had solved the mystery. All attempts to reduce the mortality rate proved futile. Troubled by the spectacle of numerous mothers suffering a slow, agonizing death, Semmelweis determined to find the cause of the disease and prevent it.

Rielyn Co

Search This Blog