Butterfly Exhibit at Lincoln Zoo - Nebraska

How is Laura's Butterfly Exhibit and the rest of the Lincoln Zoo funded?  How is food for the animals purchased?  How are new animals and butterflies purchased?  Through donations!

 

A large part of their funding is through donations.  To support the Lincoln Zoo, visit their website.

Butterfly Exhibits and Butterfly Houses purchase their butterflies from butterfly farmers.  Wild butterflies are not collected from nature to fill the exhibits.  In the wild, nasty diseases, predators, and parasitoids are ever-present, sickening and killing butterflies. Butterflies for butterfly exhibits, like the Lincoln Zoo, are raised at butterfly farms, often in laboratories to keep these elements away from their healthy butterflies.

If you're able, please consider supporting the Lincoln Zoo through a donation and visiting the zoo when you're in Nebraska!

Pipevine and Gold Rim (Polydamas) Swallowtail Eggs

Both Pipevine and Gold Rim Swallowtail butterflies lay eggs on pipevine - but there aren't many species of pipevine that they can both eat.  What one eats normally kills the other. 

Gold/yellow/greenish eggs are Gold Rim eggs. Burgundy/rust eggs are Pipevine eggs.

We grow Aristolochia tomentosa for Pipevine Swallowtails and Aristolochia elegans for Gold Rim (also called Polydamas) Swallowtails.  From what we understand, Aristolochia triloba feeds both.

The top photo is of a Gold Rim (Polydamas) Swallowtail, a tail-less swallowtail butterfly.  The bottom photo is of a male Pipevine Swallowtail.