HOW BUTTERFLIES HELP ORANGUTANS

Butterflies, known for their natural beauty and colourful wings, belong to the order Lepidoptera. The name comes from the Greek words for wing, pteron, and for scales, lepido, the physical feature for which butterflies are known. 

As one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries that harbor the majority of Earth's species, Indonesia has over 2,000 different species of butterflies. While thousands more butterfly species can also be found in South America, Indonesia boasts hundreds of endemic butterfly species. This means that many are only found in Indonesia and nowhere else on earth. This is due to their limited distribution, meaning that many are found on only one or a few islands.

Butterflies metamorphize through several different physical forms throughout their lifecycle. The beautiful, winged insects you are most familiar with is their adult phase, which is when they are ready to produce eggs. At this stage, butterflies feed on the nectar of flowers as a source of food. They do so by foraging from one flower to another, greatly assisting in the pollination process: When pollen is carried by butterflies from flower to flower, contact made with the pistils allows plants to reproduce.

Since orangutans spend the majority of their lives in the trees, eating plants, the pollination process is essential in supporting the production of their food species as well. Plants are pollinated in different ways; some species require the help of wind to carry pollen through the air, while others rely on animals to carry the pollen between plants. The presence of many different butterfly species as pollinator ‘agents’, therefore, is vital in the forest. So, indirectly, butterflies play a major role in helping provide natural food sources for orangutans.

Unfortunately, several factors can lead to a decline in butterfly populations, such as forest destruction and conversion, air pollution, and the hunting of butterflies for display collections. Some butterfly species choose only a certain plant species on which to lay their eggs, thus, the loss of plant species caused by the felling of forests has a devastating impact on the survival of butterflies.