The Small White Butterfly's Reproductive Tract Which Also Digests
Small white butterfly ( Pieris rapae ) Today I have a little story based around a research paper which I just read. It turns out that female butterflies have an organ in their reproductive tract that is similar in some ways to a stomach/intestine. This organ, called the bursa copulatrix, digests the male butterfly's spermatophore proteins but little was known about how it functioned before this study. The study was carried out on the small white/small cabbage white/white butterfly ( Pieris rapae ). The small white is not a New Zealand native, but was introduced to New Zealand long ago and is now well established throughout the country, even reaching the subantarctic islands. The small white caterpillar eats human agricultural crops (cabbage and other brassicas in particular), and so has been able to spread from its native range in Europe, Asia, and Africa across the globe following human agriculture and is now found in North and South America and Austra...