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Sticker of Eastern pale clouded yellow
Bug card No. 1487 of 4,939

Eastern pale clouded yellow

Colias erate
Eats: Nectar and pollenButterfliesGardens and meadows6 legs

The eastern pale clouded yellow is a lemon yellow butterfly with a wide black border on its wings. It has a small black dot on each front wing and an orange spot on each back wing. Its wingtips are a little more pointed than those of its cousins.

Lives in
From southeastern Europe and Turkey across Central Asia to Japan and Taiwan, and south to Ethiopia and Somalia
Top speed
about 15 km/h (9.3 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Butterflies cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
The butterfly drinks flower nectar. Its caterpillars eat plants of the pea family, such as alfalfa, clover and sweet clover.
For real!Photo of Eastern pale clouded yellow
Picture by 池田正樹 ( talk )masaki ikeda. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It flies from May to September, and two families of butterflies grow up each year.

2

Some females have whitish wings instead of yellow. In Central Asia most females look like that.

3

It changes so much from one butterfly to the next that it is very hard to tell apart from its relatives.

4

On the males the black wing border is strong, while on the females it is paler and dotted with yellow spots.

5

The butterflies from Central Asia are usually bigger than the ones in Europe.

you asked

Most asked questions about Eastern pale clouded yellow

?What does the eastern pale clouded yellow eat?

The butterfly drinks nectar. Its caterpillars eat clover, alfalfa and other pea family plants.

?Where does the eastern pale clouded yellow live?

From southeastern Europe across Asia to Japan and Taiwan, and also in northeast Africa.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Colias erate
Named by
Esper, 1805
Group
Butterflies
Family
Pieridae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
Lives on
Europe, Asia, Africa

Where the facts come from

  1. Colias erate (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by 池田正樹 ( talk )masaki ikeda. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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