Question for everybody: has anyone ever seen butterflies aggregate and mud-puddle near sea-shores, drinking sea-water? If you have, some information (location, species, approximately how many individuals) will help.
(This email obviously went unnoticed the first time, so I am re-posting it since I find it hard to believe that among the many members of this very active list nobody has ever seen butterflies drink water on the sea-shores.) Thank you, Vazrick ________________________________ From: Vazrick Nazari <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Eddie John <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, June 23, 2011 8:56:22 AM Subject: [ButterflyIndia] Fwd: Seawater puddling I received this query from a friend who would like to know if anyone has observed seawater puddling behavior in butterflies ... Any takers? (Please reply to all) ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Eddie John" <[email protected]> To: "Vazrick Nazari" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 5:55:14 AM Subject: Seawater puddling Hi Vazrick, I trust you are keeping well? I wonder if you can help very briefly, with an inquiry, please? I am preparing a paper with John Tennent on some observations of seawater puddling - something witnessed independently by John and me - but there are very few published reports of this activity. My impression, so far, is that seawater puddling is genuinely rare, rather than rarely reported. So far, I have the following references: Pe'er, G. 2002. Puddling observations in Israel. News of the Israeli Lepidopterists Society 19(1): 13. Pola, M & GarcÃa-ParÃs , M. 2005. Marine puddling in Papilio polytes (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae.) Florida Entomologist 88 (2):211-213. Tennent, W. J. 1997. Unusual behaviour in Papilio ulysses L., 1758 (Lep.: Papilionidae). Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation 109 : 156-157. These refer to marine puddling, but are the only ones known to us, so I'm checking with various contacts in an attempt to gauge the extent of this activity. Is it something you've witnessed anywhere, please? All the best, Eddie CYPRUS BUTTERFLY RECORDING SCHEME: www.cyprusbutterflies.co.uk [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -- Enjoy
