Anicia checkerspot
The anicia checkerspot is a butterfly with red, black and yellow bands on its wings, like a colourful checkerboard. Those bright colours are a warning. It tastes bad because its caterpillars eat plants with bitter chemicals.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its caterpillars keep bitter plant chemicals in their bodies for life, so birds leave them alone.
Young caterpillars build a silk tent on their food plant to stay safe.
Caterpillars rest all winter and wake up in spring. If the weather is bad, they can rest for more than a year.
Males sometimes drink from mud puddles.
It lives everywhere from mountain tops to grasslands, canyons and dry pine forests.
Most asked questions about Anicia checkerspot
?Why is the anicia checkerspot so colourful?
Its bright colours warn birds that it tastes bad.
?What does the anicia checkerspot eat?
Butterflies drink nectar from flowers. Caterpillars eat plants such as plantain.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Euphydryas anicia
- Named by
- Doubleday, 1847
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Euphydryas anicia (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by xpda. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Monarch butterfly
Peacock butterfly
Blue morpho
Old World swallowtail
Small white
Eastern tiger swallowtail
Common assassin bug
Green milkweed locust
Indian green lynx spider
Rice stink bug
Jagged ambush bug
Buttonhook leafbeetle jumping spider