Cyprus Mail - 22 March 2019 - article by Annette Chrysostomou
Painted lady butterflies are moving from Israel to Cyprus at the rate of 25,000 per hour Israeli TV Channel 12 news reported.
According to the Jerusalem Post, millions of the colourful butterflies were spotted in Israel during the holiday of Purim on Thursday.
They are migrating en masse north from Africa and passing through Cyprus on their way to Turkey and Greece.
Unlike monarch butterflies, they make such immense trips within a single generation.
“The migration has been noted since antiquity, yet humans have not been able to fully understand what triggers it and how it is performed. It had been observed that when painted lady butterflies are separated from the sun, they can no longer navigate,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
While the butterflies in the Middle East also travel from Saudi Arabia to Greece, others travel from California to Mexico.
The Australian painted lady butterfly is mostly confined to Australia, although westerly winds have dispersed it to islands east of the continent, including New Zealand.
The painted ladies have a large wing span of five to nine centimetres and orange, black-spotted wings.
