Arctic fritillary
The Arctic fritillary is a butterfly of the cold far north. It lives on the tundra, in bogs and on mountain meadows. Its caterpillars are so tough that they can sleep through two winters.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Males fly along the edges of bogs and wait for females to arrive.
The female lays her eggs one by one under the leaves of the food plant.
It can take one or two years to grow from egg to butterfly, because the summers are so short.
It only flies in July and August, the warmest part of the northern summer.
Most asked questions about Arctic fritillary
?Where does the Arctic fritillary live?
In the far north: northern Lapland, Russia, Alaska, Canada and high mountains in the United States.
?How does a butterfly survive the Arctic winter?
Its caterpillars hibernate, and some sleep through two winters before they become butterflies.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Boloria chariclea
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Purplish fritillary
Where the facts come from
- Boloria chariclea (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 Walter Siegmund (talk). CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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