How to decorate your garden with butterflies!

Created By RISC | 3 years ago

Last modified date : 2 years ago

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to pick which butterflies visit your home? And you can…​

Butterflies belong to the Arthropoda phylum, Insecta class, and Lepidoptera order. Thailand has about 40 families and 1,300 species. Bangkok has about 50 species. ​

Their lifecycle consists of: ​
- Egg: 3-7 days. ​
- Caterpillar 14-35 days. ​
- Pupa: 7-14 days. ​
- Adult: 14-21 days. ​

The food each caterpillar prefers decides where each species is found…
- Common Tiger caterpillars eat crown flower and rosy milkweed leaves. ​
- Pain Tiger caterpillars eat crown flower and cluster fig leaves. ​
- Peacock Pansy caterpillars eat waterkanon and lippia leaves. ​
- Leopard Lacewing caterpillars eat passionflower and passionfruit leaves. ​
- Painted Jezebel caterpillars eat parasite leaves. ​

If you grow the plants these caterpillars eat, you can attract butterflies to your home, although environment and topography also determine population size. ​

Some butterflies, particularly when caterpillars, can be pests because they destroy foliage. Yet they also benefit the ecosystem by pollinating plants and benefit us with their beautiful wings. ​

Butterflies can be spotted in city parks. In Bangkok you can learn about them at the Bangkok Butterfly Garden and Insectarium at Wachira Benjathat Park (Rot Fai Park). There are lots of varieties to examine and the staff are always ready to help. ​
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Story by Thanawat Jinjaruk, Senior Researcher, Environment Division, RISC and Asia Lekkul, Intern from Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University

Reference: Forest and Plant Conservation Research Office, Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation ​
Bangkok Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, Department of Environment, Bangkok ​
Jutaras, N., Sing, K. Wilson, J.J. and Dong, H. 2020. Butterflies in urban parks in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand. Biodiversity Data Journal. 8. doi:10.3897/BDJ.8.e56317   ​
Ghazoul, J. 2002. Impact of logging on the richness and diversity of forest butterflies in a tropical dry forest in Thailand. Biodiversity and Conservation. 11: 521–541. doi.org/10.1023/a:1014812701423