Some Like It Hot

 Some may like it hot, but that wouldn’t be me.  And perhaps it isn’t you either.  In this overheated summer of 2012 many of us are dragging limply through the sweltering days, our jug of water by our side as we accomplish needed outdoor tasks.  Yesterday I was taking a water break in our gazebo, faced flushed and feeling like I was radiating heat from every pore.  It was in the high 90’s and I had just been pushing a mower around our convoluted walking paths for over an hour, when I noticed the cool-as-a-cucumber Queen butterflies sipping nectar from the flowers at high noon in direct sunlight and not even breaking a sweat.

Now, of course, I know that insects are in that “cold blooded” category where internal temperatures are regulated by external means, but STILL.  Aren’t they hot?  So I did a little reading, enough to know, there is no way I am going to be able to wrap up “thermoregulation in butterflies” or insects in a general way here.  I have said before, I am not a card-carrying entomologist and one read of one abstract explains why!  Although, here is a fun word we can all understand.   Butterflies are “heliotherms”, deriving their heat from the sun.  Many of my Cape Cod friends probably see themselves the same way, “heliotherming” on the beaches every day.

We have all seen butterflies spreading their wings out to bask in the sun, to raise their temperature so that they are able to get those flight muscles going, but I just wonder when is too much, too much?  Clearly they have a greater tolerance for the heat than I do, for even in the triple digit weather I see these dozen or so Queen butterflies sipping from blue mist flowers planted around the gazebo with no sign of stress.  Clearly I think they can take the heat better than I can.

Speaking of these Queen butterflies, they are new to me, a close relative of the Monarch, also laying their eggs on milkweeds and also absorbing the toxins into their bodies so that they are not something birds should add to their menu.   What amazes me is how long they have been here, almost two months now.  Perhaps they are long lived, or perhaps I am seeing successive generations.  I see milkweed, a TX variety called Antelope milkweed along the road when I walk the dog and it is there that I should search for the caterpillars.  I would love to find one, for being noxious they have the same warning colors as the Monarch, black yellow and white, and like the Monarch they have fake antennae to confuse the predator. “Is this my head or is this my head?”  Only the Queens have thrown in an extra pair midway down for good measure. 

 

At any rate, they have been omnipresent on these blue mist flowers and I just wonder how long it will last.  And, in reading about the flowers, they are supposed to bloom from late summer through the fall but they have been out since early summer.  Hmm, is that unusual I wonder or not?  All the things that stump the newly transplanted person.

Well, it is that matutinal time of day (another word gleaned from “thermoregulation in insects” research, all it means is early morning) and I have birds to feed. I believe it is going to be hot, no surprise there.  And the insects will be all around me, soaking it up without compliant.  What I need is an ability to add a little “vernier control” to my life with some “cooling dominant” thrown in and I should be good.