Lesser spotted fritillary
The lesser spotted fritillary is a small orange butterfly with lots of black spots and wiggly black bands. It loves sunny meadows, slopes and roadsides. Its caterpillar is grey with blue dots and soft white spines.
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Fun facts
Its eggs are tiny, only about half a millimetre wide. A caterpillar hatches after 5 or 6 days.
The pupa is pearl grey with small black dots, and some dots are trimmed with red or yellow.
In many places two families of butterflies grow up every year, one in early summer and one in late summer.
It looks a lot like its cousin, the spotted fritillary, so you have to look closely to tell them apart.
Most asked questions about Lesser spotted fritillary
?What does the lesser spotted fritillary eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar. Its caterpillars eat mullein leaves.
?How big is the lesser spotted fritillary?
It is small. Its wings measure about 1.5 to 2.3 centimetres from tip to tip.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Melitaea trivia
- Named by
- Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Desert fritillary
Where the facts come from
- Melitaea trivia (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 Charles J. Sharp. 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.
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