Isolated Host Plants

Finding caterpillars on their host plants can be challenging when the host plants are super abundant and there are only so many female butterflies to lay so many eggs in a population.

One strategy designed to increase your productivity is to try and locate isolated host plants either within the population or find plants along the periphery of the population.  Understanding female ovipostion tendencies makes this principle a little more clear.  Female butterflies tend patrol here and there in search of host plant to lay eggs.  If she locates a quite a few plants in one small section, she will likely only lay a few eggs in that section before moving on.  This decreases your productivity on a per plant basis.  This seems to be a pattern of some butterfly species. 

At the same time, if a female butterfly locates only one plant in an isolated section, the odds are very good that she will lay an egg on that plant; simply because she had no other options.  Understanding this concept and leveraging it can be very beneficial.

Click here to watch a video that reviews this idea.