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From: jahayes@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: moth flutter
Message-ID: <4157.27d6337a@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 91 17:35:06 GMT
References: <1991Mar5.195259.20804@xn.ll.mit.edu>
Lines: 28

In article <1991Mar5.195259.20804@xn.ll.mit.edu>, rp@juno.ll.mit.edu (Richard Pavelle) writes:
> I have been struck by the random flight (fluttering) of moths
> and butterflies. An explanation could be that the behavior would 
> help avoid capture. But the flight may appear more random than
> it is. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
> 
Yes, but I stole them :-).

A couple of my colleagues at the University of Texas, Bob Srygley and
Peng Chai, published a paper in (I think) the American Naturalist a
couple issues ago on this very subject. Srygley and Chai (SR hereafter)
hypothesize that tropical butterfly flight patterns are correlated with
predation risk and aposematic coloration/distaste. Butterflies that are
tasty have to fly erratically and quickly, and also tend to spend most
of their time in the shade, while those that are distasteful to predators
lumber about in placid regular wingbeats in the sunshine. It's a 
remarkably good fit to the observed species distributions and flight
patterns of the butterflies in question. 

Srygley used videotapes of bfs in flight and then digitized every
tenth frame or so to get sorta stroboscopic views of flight paths.
Pretty neat stuff. I helped with the statistics, but other than that
I have no connection with the work, I just think it's neat.

Regards,

Josh Hayes, Zoology, Miami of Ohio
jahayes@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu