How Are Butterflies Helpful?

Series Summary

Insects are small invertebrate animals that can be real pests. Including flies, spiders, bees and wasps, bugs tend to annoy humans with their bites, stings and buzzing. However, each insect plays an important role in nature, whether it be to pollinate flowers, produce honey or prey on other pests. All in all, some insects can be quite beneficial to nature's cycle. In this free video series on insects, an experienced entomologist discusses butterflies and other bugs. Learn about what butterflies eat, how long butterflies live and how long a caterpillar will spend in a cocoon. Get information on Japanese beetles, aphids and silk moths. Find out how to breed and care for butterflies and get tips on how butterflies mate.

Video Transcript

"I'm Mike Quinn. I'm been an entomologist for twenty years, and we're here at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center, and we're talking about how are butterflies beneficial. And their helpfulness to us is they pollinate many plants, and moving pollen around is critical to most plants. Some are wind pollinated; most are insect pollinated. And the, another way that insects, butterflies in particular, are helpful to us is that the caterpillars provide food for songbirds, and that's, in fact, what induces most of the birds to fly up from the tropics, and and spread out across North America. Because the caterpillars emerge to feed on the new leaves when the trees put on the new leaves. So, providing food for birds and other wildlife, and pollinating are some of the main ways that butterflies are helpful to us."