The Habitat of the Schaus Swallowtail Butterfly
- The Schaus Swallowtail butterfly.Eastern Tiger Swallowtail image by Rob Gainor from Fotolia.com
The Schaus swallowtail butterfly, discovered at the beginning of last century, carries the surname of the man who discovered it, Dr. William Schaus.
The Schaus butterfly is distinctly yellow and dark brown in color, with approximately a four- inch wingspan. Their antennas are the easiest way to distinguish males from females, male antennas have yellow tips, while females' are all black. The adult Schaus butterflies' lifespan is approximately a month.
In the hammock forests, males are more adventuresome than females and leave its confines to follow trails, which run alongside it. The Pacific Ocean borders the Florida Keys, and they'll venture out over the ocean, then back to the forest. The females occasionally leave the hammock forest to forage, but prefer to remain in familiar surroundings. - The growth in the tropical hardwood forests is thick and dense and is called a closed canopy. The tops of the trees reach approximately forty feet high, and form a canopy-like cover which allows little direct sunlight to reach the ground. The moist, forest ground is covered with leaves and flower petals that fall from trees and plant growth.
- The tropical hardwood hammock forest and the Shaus Swallowtail butterflly coexist.eastern tiger swallowtail image by Bruce MacQueen from Fotolia.com
The solitude and relative safety of the hardwood hammock forests suit the Schaus swallowtail butterfly. As they fly, they instinctively dodge spider webs, which would entrap them, and they have the generic trait of being able to stop their flight and fly backwards to escape birds. In their short lifetime, the adults flourish. They find nectar to eat from plants that grow in this environment, and the torchwood and wild lime trees, which they must have to survive, grow in the hammock forests. Females lay their eggs on the bottom of torchwood tree leaves, the hatched caterpillars eat these leaves along with wild lime leaves found in the forest. - The influx of people into the Florida Keys brought destruction to the Shaus swallowtail butterflies habitat. The once common tropical hardwood forests in South Florida were leveled to provide room for cities to grow. Now, except for the Florida Keys, the forests are gone.
Along with elimination of habitat, the growth of the cities brings the use of pesticides, the arrival of butterfly collectors and vehicle traffic, which equals road kill. These new killers, plus natural predators and extremes in weather seriously diminished the Shaus butterfly population.
It was already fighting for survival when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992. After the storm, only about 70 of the butterflies remained in existence. - Recent captive breeding has increased the butterfly population to about 350. If, though, the tropical hardwood hammock forests continue to disappear, along with the torchwood and wild lime trees, the Schaus swallowtail butterfly will probably also disappear.
