Butterfly is my favorite animal. They're so beautiful.
They are a very ancient animal too. There are butterfly fossils that show butterflies existed 56 million years ago!
That's amazing! I didn't know that. There is many butterfly species too, all different colors and shapes.
, and a few in cold locations may take several years to pass through their entire life cycle.
Butterflies are often polymorphic, and many species make use of camouflage, mimicry and aposematism to evade their predators. Some, like the monarch and the painted lady, migrate over long distances. Many butterflies are attacked by parasites or parasitoids, including wasps, protozoans, flies, and other invertebrates, or are preyed upon by other organisms. Some species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees
classification based on strongly supported clades is seemingly within reach.
Lines of evidence Fossils.
Butterfly fossils have been well covered by Grimaldi & Engel (2005), who point out their weakness in resolving the sister group of the Rhopalocera: butterflies of 45 My are much like their living counterparts. The first fossil was formed around 40-50 million years ago.
Lines of evidence Host plants.
Some species in the Satyrinae use ferns as larval host plants, and it is not impossible that the butterflies could have originated before