2-Describe the relationship between ants and endangered butterflies?

Answer and Explanation:

Butterflies, Maculinea alcon, can cheat on ants.  They manage to get ants to breed their larvae, even better than their own. This capability involves a process of coevolution between both insects.

After copula, the M. alcon butterfly lays its eggs on a plant. From 4 to 10 days later, the eggs hatch, and many small caterpillars emerge from them and they start feeding on the plant´s tissues. Two or three weeks later, these larvae go to the ground at night. During this time, ants are more active, and there are more probabilities for the caterpillar to be found. This is part of the butterfly survival strategy. When the ants find the caterpillar, this last one secretes an external chemical cover, that is very similar to the ants´ one. Also, they can secrete a sweet substance that attracts ants.

When ants touch the caterpillar body with their antenna, they perceive this chemical and recognize the individual as one of them.

They take the larva to their nest where they raise it for approximately 10 months. In the nest, butterfly larvae feed on ants larvae.

When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it breaks its rigid cuticle to emerge. When ants find this new strange individual in their nets, they attack it, so the butterfly needs to leave the nest. Once they can fly, they mate and the reproductive cycle starts all over again.

Maculinea alcon is a highly damaging species, that might easily become invasive when they are introduced in new areas.

They are considered to be endangered because their natural environment is almost destroyed.

This process is considered to be coevolution because the strategy of this amazing species is to copy the ants´ chemical profile, while these last ones adapt to them and feed on the secreted sweet substance.                        

Explanation:

The connection between endangered butterflies and ants is a kind of mutualistic beneficial interaction.  

For this situation, we can utilize the case of Maculinea types of butterflies as an endangered butterfly and the Myrmica ants which have a comparable relationship that is depicted in the inquiry.  

The Maculinea species has complex natural cycles. In the principal stage, the hatchlings is feed inside blossoms of a decided specie of plants. When it develops enough, it will drop to the ground and this is the time were ants has a hero job.  

The Maculinea can interface with ants settlements by two fundamental components. One is the concoction flags that produce, making it "all the more part" of the ant's colony. The subsequent sign is the acoustic sign which is like the acoustic sign of the queen ant of the colony.  

Recall that ants safeguards their colony and fills in as a hindrance for predators. So one of the primary reasons why the hatchlings developed so as to communicate with ants is the security against predators. On account of this, the hatchlings goes about as a parasite in the colony, where it eat the ant's brood.

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