I found a butterfly,looks similar to to psyche , moving from one plant to another. Are they searching for host plants ? I trapped that psyche using a net shawl and took pictures.
Place : Cherukkad, Kozhikode
Date:7/12/2023
Time :2pm
Theertha
I do have a mini - cardamine forest .I kept that butterfly into those cardamine plants.
Place : Cherukkad, Kozhikode
Date:7/12/2023
Time :2pm
Theertha
Later I found that psyche is laying eggs on cardamine plants.
Place : Cherukkad, Kozhikode
Date:7/12/2023
Time :2pm
Theertha
Picture of eggs ,I could find 4 eggs .still searching.later I got one more eggs .
Place : Cherukkad, Kozhikode
Date:7/12/2023
Time :2pm
Theertha.
Later on 8/12/2023 .I repeated the same , I capture a psyche and added to my mini - cardamine forest .
Now total of 6 eggs I kept in a plastic box and two of them are in cardamine garden .
I saw this psyche butterfly flying from one plant to other ,I felt this may search for host plant !? I just captured and added to my cardamine pots & I founded this
Observation: Observed 3 pupa on Cleome plant on 9/08/2024. Hypothesis: Pupa may be of Psyche Butterfly.
Pupa emerged as a Butterfly today (10/8/2024)at 9am. Interpretations: The emerged butterfly is Psyche Butterfly because of the following reason:
The upper forewing has a black spot on a mainly white background.
Upperside: white; base of wings very slightly powdered with minute black scales. Hindwing is white.
Underside: white; costal margin and apex of forewing broadly, and the whole surface of the hindwing irrorated (speckled) with transverse, very slender, greenish strigae and minute dots.
larva also feeds on leaves of Cardamine & Cleome species.
Pupa: Sometimes green, but more often of a delicate pink shade
Host plant: Cleome rutidosperma https://indiabiodiversity.org/species/show/229206
Date of observation started:24/08/2024
Date of butterfly emerged:28/08/2024
Place: Cherukkad Kozhikode
Photo: Theertha
Amritha’s Curriculum topics include Plant and crop improvements and biotechnology.
In discussion ,we took example of Cardamine and how we can make a cardamine which is resistant to Psyche caterpillar.
Coevolutionary Interaction with Cardamine and Psyche Butterfly
Reference Shared:
Coevolution can be defined as evolutionary changes that occur within two or more organisms as a response to interactions between them and the resulting mutual selective pressures that those interactions cause.Coevolution - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics.
An organism is any living thing that functions as an individual.[1] Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have been proposed to define what an organism is. Among the most common is that an organism has autonomous reproduction, growth, and metabolism.Organism - Wikipedia
Glucosinolates are biologically active compounds found in the Brassicaceae family of plants, including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, rapeseed, mustard, and horseradish. https://www.sciencedirect.com › glu… Glucosinolate - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
Glucosinolates are biologically active compounds found in the Brassicaceae family of plants, including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, rapeseed, mustard, and horseradish. https://www.sciencedirect.com › glu… Glucosinolate - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
“Glucosinolates are natural products found almost exclusively in the order Capparales, which includes around thirty families, including Brassicaceae, Caricaceae, and Capparaceae (Fahey et al., 2001). These sulfur-containing secondary metabolites occur in a variety of species such as field mustard, cauliflower, kale, garden cress, cabbage, broccoli, and similar vegetables. Glucosinolates share a common core structure consisting of a β-thioglucose linked by a sulfur atom to a (Z)-N-hydroximinosulfate ester (Halkier and Gershenzon, 2006), and a variable side chain derived from amino acids (Scheme 1).” Frontiers | Glucosinolates, a natural chemical arsenal: More to tell than the myrosinase story).
NSP stands for nitrile specifier protein, which is an enzyme found in cabbage white butterflies and other white butterfly species. The NSP enzyme is involved in detoxification, and it converts mustard oil into non-toxic nitriles.
Earlier work identified two caterpillar enzymes that play a central role in detoxification, and the genes that encode them: the NSP enzyme (nitrile specifier protein), which manipulates the potential mustard oil bomb to produce non-toxic nitriles instead of toxic mustard oils, and the MA enzyme (major allergen), which was hypothesized to also be important for the survival of cabbage whitefly caterpillars on cruciferous plants. The NSP and MA genes are sister genes and each evolved from a gut protein of unknown function found in many butterfly species. Both enzymes are found exclusively in cabbage white butterflies and other species of the Pieridae (white butterfly) family whose host plants contain glucosinolates. “We wondered whether both enzymes are important for the detoxification of glucosinolates and insect fitness. After all, previous studies have shown that related butterfly species that no longer feed on plants containing glucosinolates have lost the enzymes during evolution. This indicates that it is apparently costly for insects to maintain enzyme activity in the absence of these plant defenses. We also wanted to know whether the function of the two enzymes differs depending on the composition of the glucosinolates in different cruciferous plants,” Heiko Vogel summarizes the initial questions of the study.Cabbage white butterflies utilize two gut enzymes for maximum flexibility in deactivating mustard oil bombs.
Recently, many studies have shown that a higher intake of cruciferous vegetables is associated with reduced risk of developing various forms of cancers primarily due to a plurality of effects, including (i) metabolic activation and detoxification, (ii) inflammation, (iii) angiogenesis, (iv) metastasis and (v) regulation of the epigenetic machinery. In the context of human malignant melanoma, a number of studies suggest that ITCs can cause cell cycle growth arrest and also induce apoptosis in human malignant melanoma cells. On such basis, ITCs could serve as promising chemo-therapeutic agents that could be used in the clinical setting to potentiate the efficacy of existing therapies.
How did you identify gravid female Psyche butterfly?
