WATCH: This Butterfly and Ant's Relationship Is... Complicated

TAMBOPATA, Peru -- It was late 2014 when Phil Torres first showed me the photos from his recent trip to the Peruvian Amazon. Among them were amazing images of the tropical wildlife, from brilliant macaws to elusive pumas. But there were a few critters in that album that stood out to us in particular. Flipping through his camera, Phil said something like, "Check out this butterfly dude. It hangs out with ants on bamboo." Butterfly on a bamboo stalk in the presence of ants. Butterflies and ants feeding from the sap secretions emitting from the bamboo shoot. Phil and I both have backgrounds in entomology, and yet we had never seen anything like this before. Sure, we knew that some butterfly larvae have symbiotic relationships with ants, known as myrmecophily. This is well documented -- many of the caterpillars that associate with ants have special organs that secrete sugars and amino acids. The ants get a sugary nutritious meal from the caterpillars and, in return, the fragile caterpillars get personal ant bodyguards that defend against predators and parasites. But this is not the case for the adult butterflies, which usually have to evade ants lest they become their next meal. Overlook of the Tambopata River at our field site in southeastern Peru. "Look at the three red spots on the butterfly wing." Phil said. "Kind of looks like the ants they're with on the bamboo. Maybe it's some sort of mimicry." Now I was really interested. The butterfly appears to be a known ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news