Jour de papillon.

Today was super sunny... so we got to see quite a bit of butterfly and actually caught a myriad of them.... Of course it was not as easy as it sounds, for I had to chase this amazing aesthetically pleasing giant butterfly... running in this weather with a back pack is not easy.  Oh yeah the butterfly got away... maybe next time. When we were conducting our point count we noticed that some butterfly where flying further from the ground than did other butterfly. The butterfly that would fly higher tended to have the apsometic coloration and those that were found closer to the ground had more of a cryptic coloration. Furthermore the butterfly and the hummingbirds seem to be competing for the same source of food; both of them were seen pollinating the same flowers... so it can be assumed that there is no competitive exclusion. Thus the butterfly and hummingbirds are coexisting, which requires that they both diverge in their niche. It would be interesting to see how both have diverged... we have reason to believe that they diverged in the time that they feed.

Sebastian also caught the queen of an ant colony!!!! And an ant that resembled a wasp... it had yellow and black colored antenna... so it is probably involved in an apsometaic Müllerian mimicry. Cannot wait to see what else I will discover tomorrow.