Family Nymphalidae - Brush-Footed Butterflies

	Family Nymphalidae - Brush-Footed Butterflies This family incorporates the admirals, fritillaries, checkerspots, crescentspots, anglewings, leafwings, painted ladies, tortoiseshells and longwings. Live butterflies photographed in the wild in the USA. Butterflies Home \| Butterflies Index \| Skipper Butterflies \| Moths \| Moths Index \| Spiders Index

Family Nymphalidae - Brushfoots or brush-footed butterflies encompass approximately 3,000 species worldwide, of which 160 or so live in or visit North America. This is a very diverse family of butterflies, and they occur everywhere except the polar ice caps. Their unifying characteristic is the reduced forelegs of both males and females. These vestigial forelegs are nearly useless for walking and give rise to the family's common name.

The habit of holding the forelegs close to the body is shared with many other insects, including bumblebees, flies, bugs and beetles.

Common Wood Nymph	Little Wood Satyr	Gray Comma	Eastern Comma
Northern Pearly Eye	American Snout	Painted Lady	American Painted Lady

Buckeye Butterfly - Junonia coenia

Common Sailor Butterfly

Cruiser Butterfly

Owl Butterfly

Common Morpho

Monarch	Viceroy Butterfly	Queen Butterfly
Subfamily Danainae - The Milkweed Butterflies & Glasswings consist of 400 species, only four of which reside in North America. The monarch is the most famous of this family, known for its soaring flight and yearly migration. Most species' caterpillars feed on the toxic milkweed plant, imparting a bitter flavor to the adult butterfly which is distasteful to birds. The viceroy butterfly is not a member of this family, but mimics the monarch.

Subfamily Heliconiinae - Heliconians and Fritillaries can be divided into 45-50 genera and were sometimes treated as a separate family (Heliconiidae) within the Papilionoidea.

Most longwings are found in the Tropics, particularly in South America; only the Argynnini are quite diverse in the Holarctic. Especially tropical species feed on poisonous plants, characteristically Passifloraceae vines, as larvae, becoming poisonous themselves. The adult butterflies announce their acquired toxicity with strong aposematic colors, warning off would-be predators. There are several famous cases of Batesian and Müllerian mimicry both within this group and with other butterflies. Other commonly-seen foodplants are Fabaceae (which also contain several toxic species), and particularly among northernly species Violaceae.

Gulf Fritillary

Great Spangled Fritillary

Meadow Fitillary

Variegated Fritillary

Eleuchia Longwing

Silver-Bordered Fritillary

Postman Butterfly

Cydno Longwing

Order Lepidoptera: Butterflies are revered for their brightly colored wings and pleasing association with fair weather and flowers. Lepidoptera comprises at least 125,000 known species including 12,000 in America north of Mexico. Learn to identify many of the American Midwest's common species through large format pictures and natural histories.
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