Let’s see the first observations of the Bioblitzes organized during fall of 2023 in Athens!
The species that seemed to appear most often in the city parks of Athens and the observers recorded it through the iNaturalist platform is…….the butterfly Vanessa Cardui or as the app calls it in Greek, "Vanessa of Cardos" (without an official Greek name, we'll accept that's what they call it!).
Vanessa cardui is one of the most widespread species of butterflies around the world and lives in areas with intense vegetation, such as fields, meadows, forests, marshes and apparently city parks. The species is highly adaptable and thus can survive in any environment.
Females lay eggs individually on a host plant, which will serve as a food source once they hatch. They are as small as a grain of sugar. The eggs are bright green at first, turning gray shortly before hatching.
Their shape looks like a tiny barrel. They hatch in 3-5 days. Their growth depends on the climate (faster growth occurs in warmer climates, in colder climates growth can take over 60 days). If you see something like this on the leaves of your plants, please don’t touch it, it will grow into a beautiful butterfly!
They mate year-round in warm climates, but reproductive behavior stops in autumn in temperate regions. Vanessa cardui makes huge, mass migrations of up to 15000 km (Liakou, 2020). Vanessa Cardui (Painted Lady in English)lives only two weeks and communicates through maneuvers, pheromones, and colors. It is a polyphagous herbivore that feeds on more than 100 different plant species, especially species of the Asteraceae family (Kreiger & Noblitt, 2014).
