Nature on our doorsteps: Cannibal caterpillars

THE striking colours of the Orange-tipped butterfly makes it one of springtime’s iconic butterflies.

The male of this species is starkly white, with contrasting bright orange tips to its front wings.

While the female does not have these orange wing tips, the undersides of both the male’s and the female’s hind wings are a lovely, mottled green.

Orange-tips can be spotted flitting along hedgerows, lanes, and riverbanks, wherever the food plant of their caterpillar is to be found.

That plant is mainly Lady’s Smock (Cuckoo Flower), but Garlic Mustard can also be suitable.

During April, new adults emerge from their overwintering pupae and quickly begin to look for a mate.

Mated females will visit a number of plants, laying a single egg on each plant just underneath the flower.

Females will lay a single bright orange egg on each plant just underneath the flower

The small bright orange egg is barrel-shaped and has distinctive ridges running from the top to the bottom.

Although it is only just over 1mm tall, its bright colour makes it easy enough to spot.

Females generally avoid plants on which an egg has already been laid.

This is because newly hatched larvae are cannibals and will eat any other eggs or any other young larvae that it finds on the flowerhead.

On large robust plants with a number of flowerheads, two or three eggs might sometimes be laid.

As long as there is enough food, the larvae will avoid one another.

However, when they have eaten their flowerhead and they eventually come into contact as more mature caterpillars, the larvae will challenge one another by jerking their heads aggressively.

They may even bite one another until one of them retreats.

Larvae are often ready to pupate by the end of June.

They remain as a pupa throughout the rest of the year, until they emerge as a new adult the following spring.

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