{"id":20481,"date":"2023-11-09T20:20:10","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T04:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=20481"},"modified":"2023-11-09T20:20:10","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T04:20:10","slug":"2023-november-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=20481","title":{"rendered":"2023 November 9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>2023 November 9<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong>The photograph below was sent to me (Jeremy Tatum) by a former student, who showed a touching faith in my ability to identify butterflies from a photograph of the underside of a butterfly photographed in Brazil. This is, of course, not remotely within the area normally covered by this site (Vancouver Island), but there are few (if any!) local butterflies to be seen just now, and this photograph is of quite exceptional interest.\u00a0 Apparently, Paul\u2019s main intent was to photograph the caiman, and he didn\u2019t know that there was a butterfly in the photograph until he examined it later.\u00a0 Still less did he know that he had photographed a remarkable behaviour.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-20480 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Dryas-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"566\" height=\"377\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Dryas-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Dryas-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Dryas.jpg 1017w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 566px) 100vw, 566px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Dryas julia\u00a0 <\/em>(Lep.: Nymphalidae \u2013 Heliconiinae)\u00a0 Paul Coleman<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0 My computer suggested that I reply to Paul with the words:\u00a0 I haven\u2019t the slightest idea.\u00a0\u00a0 I almost did that before it occurred to me that identification might actually be not impossible.\u00a0 The characteristic wing shape said immediately that it was from the nymphalid subfamily Heliconiinae.\u00a0 After that, options were rather limited.\u00a0 The colour, and what little can be seen of the pattern, and the locality, pointed strongly to <em>Dryas julia.\u00a0 <\/em>When we look at what the butterfly is doing, the identification is confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>It was only recently discovered that the Julia butterfly slightly irritates the eyes of a caiman, causing it to cry, and the butterfly then \u201cnectars\u201d on these crocodile tears.\u00a0\u00a0 So, without planning it, Paul had photographed this quite remarkable behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2023 November 9 The photograph below was sent to me (Jeremy Tatum) by a former student, who showed a touching faith in my ability to identify butterflies from a photograph of the underside of a butterfly photographed in Brazil. This is, of course, not remotely within the area normally covered by this site (Vancouver Island), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invertebrate-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20482,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20481\/revisions\/20482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}