Picky Pollinators: A Study of the Effect of Flower Variants on a Plant's Ability to Attract Butterflies

Overview

Objectives/Goals I recorded butterfly behavior when butterflies where exposed to variants of flowers. I wanted to find what causes butterflies to prefer one breed of flower over another. Methods/Materials I used 90 flowers, and 24 painted lady butterflies all together in my experiment. I placed 4 butterflies at a time, for 30 min. in a terrarium with 3 flowers of each variant in the catagory of color, petal size, and stem height. I recorded the number of landings and feedings on the flower. Results Color variants: yellow flowers had an avg. of 4.3 landings, white flowers had a avg. of 4, red had 3 and blue had 1.6. Height varients: 4cm flowers had 5.3 avg. 2cm had 4.3, 6cm had 4 and 8cm flowers with no visible petals had 3.3 landings on avg. Conclusions/Discussion Both the blossom color and plant height made significant differences in the flowers ability to attract butterflies. Yellow flowers and flowers with short to medium size stems had the most amount of landings

Awards (1)

• Honorable Mention

Competition history

• CSEF 2010 Zoology · Entry J2421

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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