THE BUTTERFLY CYCLE 

One of the marvels of evolution is the life cycle of butterflies. The first stage is the egg which hatches to give a caterpillar. The only purpose of caterpillars is to eat and in most cases it is leaves.  Caterpillars go through 5 stages, called instars. Caterpillars have exoskeletons which gives them structural strength. However, as they eat and grow they out grow their exoskeleton, they then attach to a leaf or small branch and shed the old skin which is replaced by a new 'skin' and then they start eating again and growing.  Each time they shed their exoskeleton we refer to that as an instar. Butterflies have 5 instars and the caterpillars grow through each instar. The final or 5th instar then prepares for the next stage the chyrsalis. The chrysalis for each species is unique. In some cases the caterpillar afixes itself to a lea or branch with "silk" that anchors it in place. Metamorphosis is the process where the cellular content of the caterpillar is ‘rearranged’ to form the adult butterfly. This is one of the marvels of nature.

Feature 2

These are to be photographs of butterflies or moths

Feature 3

Another photograph