www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I wonder how long our current butterfly species have been around?  (Not necessarily in Europe). No doubt Neolithic people knew that over the winter their caves might have Small Tortoiseshells.

But that's not what I am really wondering.  When might Small Tortoiseshell or say Orange Tip have first occurred somewhere?  One million, ten million years ago?  Any inspired guesses?

Jack

They certainly pre-date humans, Jack.

Earliest ones at least 200 million years ago according to this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42636275

Hard to be sure which currently extant species were the first. Probably skippers though, given they are more like moths.

It is thought homo sapiens only evolved 250-300,000 years ago.

Actually the Papilionidae are closer to the original rootstock. They are descended from ancient microlepidoptera probably evolving alongside many of the macrolepitopteran moth families were familiar with.

It's an interesting question and I have wondered myself how much impact human evolution has had on their speciation as we've altered habitats. Before the ancient Mediterranean civilisations it was mostly covered in woodlands. Did the opening up of the area surrounding the Med cause a rapid speciation of Blues and Skippers?

There's an excellent paper here, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02041-9, including a time-calibrated tree of over 2000 species. Unfortunately, you can't read it to species level as presented, to find out when recognisable orange tips or small tortoiseshells were first flying, but it gives a good idea of the diversification of the groups.

In recent geological history, the Ice Ages played a big role in butterfly dispersion and speciation, though I imagine this was less important in the Mediterranean than in the Alps and further north. Many species came to the UK, for example, while there was still a land bridge at the end of the last Ice Age.

10 thousand years ago, the global population of humans is estimated to have been about a million (source: Microsoft Copilot, so not necessarily true!). It's difficult to imagine Homo sapiens having a very significant impact on the evolution (or co-evolution) of other species until much more recently than this. But it's a fascinating question, whether human civilisation allowed certain groups to thrive and diversify.

I believe the earliest recognisable paintings of butterflies are of plain tigers, dating from about 1350BC, in the tomb of Nebamun.

Guy

Another interesting article on the subject, this time from the "New Scientist":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... t-origins/

Dave

David

Earliest ones at least 200 million years ago

The way my Large White caterpillars are getting through Nasturtiums, I doubt these ones will last another 200 minutes!!!

Jack

Early Dragonflies could be pretty big. This is of course a model.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.explorersw ... gonfly.jpg

Jack