Great southern white
The great southern white is a white butterfly that lives along warm coasts in the Americas. Some females are light and some are dark. Big groups of them fly along the coast to find new places to lay their eggs.
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Fun facts
When it migrates, it flies in one direction only and never comes back.
A newly hatched caterpillar eats its own eggshell as its first meal.
Its caterpillar is purplish green with yellowish stripes and grows to about 3 centimetres.
The mother finds the right plants by smelling special chemicals in cabbage and its relatives.
A grown-up butterfly lives only about 4 to 10 days.
Most asked questions about Great southern white
?What does the great southern white caterpillar eat?
Leaves of cabbage, kale, radish and similar plants. It can be a pest on vegetable farms.
?Does the great southern white migrate?
Yes. It flies along the coast to new places, sometimes up to 160 kilometres, and does not return.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Ascia monuste
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1764
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Pieridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Pieridae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Ascia (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 Anne Toal from US. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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