The Queen Butterfly is a North and South American butterfly

Butterfly

A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured...

 in the family Nymphalidae

Nymphalidae

The Nymphalidae is a family of about 5,000 species of butterflies which are distributed throughout most of the world. These are usually medium sized to large butterflies. Most species have a reduced pair of forelegs and many hold their colourful wings flat when resting. They are also called...

 (the brush-foots) with a wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 of 2.75–3.25" (70–88mm). It is orange or brown with black wing borders and small white forewing spots on its dorsal

Dorsum (biology)

In anatomy, the dorsum is the upper side of animals that typically run, fly, or swim in a horizontal position, and the back side of animals that walk upright. In vertebrates the dorsum contains the backbone. The term dorsal refers to anatomical structures that are either situated toward or grow...

 wing surface, and reddish ventral wing surface fairly similar to the dorsal surface. The ventral hindwings have black veins and small white spots in a black border. The male has a black androconial scent patch on its dorsal hindwings.

This species is possibly a close relative to the similarly-colored Soldier Butterfly (or "Tropic Queen"; Danaus eresimus); in any case, it is not close to the Plain Tiger (Danaus chrysippus) as was long believed. There are about 10 recognized subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 (Smith et al. 2005). As with other North American Danaus

Danaus (genus)

Danaus, commonly called Tigers, Milkweeds, Monarchs, and Queens, is a genus of butterflies in the tiger butterfly tribe. They are found worldwide, including North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Indonesia and Australia...

species, it is involved in Müllerian mimicry

Müllerian mimicry

Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon when two or more harmful species, that may or may not be closely related and share one or more common predators, have come to mimic each other's warning signals...

 with the Viceroy butterfly

Viceroy butterfly

The Viceroy Butterfly is a North American butterfly with a range from the Northwest Territories along the eastern edges of the Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada mountains, southwards into central Mexico....

 (Limenitis archippus) where the two co-occur.

Life cycle

Females lay small white eggs singly on plants in the milkweed subfamily (Asclepiadoideae), including Mexican Milkweed, Swamp Milkweed

Swamp Milkweed

Asclepias incarnata is a herbaceous, perennial plant species native to North America...

, Desert Milkweed, and Sandhill Milkweed. The egg hatches into a black caterpillar

Caterpillar

Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...

 with transverse white stripes and yellow spots, and three pairs of long, black filaments. The caterpillar feeds on the milkweed and sequesters chemicals that make it distasteful to some predators. It then goes through six instars, after which the larva finds a suitable spot to pupa

Pupa

A pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The pupal stage is found only in holometabolous insects, those that undergo a complete metamorphosis, going through four life stages; embryo, larva, pupa and imago...

te. The adult emerges 7 to 10 days afterwards.
D. gilippus has multiple generation

Generation

Generation , also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring....

s a year.

Along with Monarch

Monarch butterfly

The Monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly , in the family Nymphalidae. It is perhaps the best known of all North American butterflies. Since the 19th century, it has been found in New Zealand, and in Australia since 1871 where it is called the Wanderer...

s, Queen butterflies are susceptible to infection by Ophryocystis elektroscirrha

Ophryocystis elektroscirrha

Ophryocystis elektroscirrha is an obligate, neogregarine protozoan that infects Monarch and Queen Butterflies. There are no other known hosts. The species was first discovered in Florida, around the late 1960s...

, a protozoa

Protozoa

Protozoa are a diverse group of single-cells eukaryotic organisms, many of which are motile. Throughout history, protozoa have been defined as single-cell protists with animal-like behavior, e.g., movement...

n parasite.

External links

• Queen butterfly movies (Tree of Life)