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🚨 ARTHROPOD OF THE DAY 🚨

The Common Buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia) is brown above. The forewing features two orange bars and two large black eyespots outlined in orange. The hindwing has two eyespots, with the upper one being the largest and containing a magenta crescent.

Their name is because the eyespots on these butterflies resemble the shoots of the buckeye (also known as horse chestnut), a type of tree that mostly thrives in North America and Eurasia.

It cannot live in freezing temperatures, but moves quickly northward in the spring to most of the United States and south Canada. The population swells in the fall during the southward migration.

The Common buckeye caterpillar has a predominantly black thorax. It has light-colored spots that pepper the entirety of the black surface. As the caterpillar grows, the spines become less pronounced.

Adults feed mainly on nectar, and occasionally on mud from the edge of puddles (probably for salts and other minerals).

These creatures feed on plant matter rich in a bitter-tasting chemical compound called ‘iridoid glycoside’, since predators including wasps, birds, ants, and other small animals prefer consuming caterpillars poor in this compound over those that have a rich concentration of it in their bodies.

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