Abstract
Maculinea (Large blue) butterflies are rare and specialized insects. After feeding briefly on the flowers of a specific food plant, the larvae of all five European species live underground for 11 months in Myrmica ant nests, where they attain >98% of their final biomass by eating the resources of the ant colony. We have studied aspects of the population ecology of all the European species of Maculinea (Table 11.1) and made intensive studies of the population dynamics of two species - Maculinea avion and Maculinea rebeli - representing alternative strategies for exploiting ant colonies that have evolved in this genus (Thomas et al., 1991).
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Thomas, J.A., Clarke, R.T., Elmes, G.W., Hochberg, M.E. (1998). Population dynamics in the genus Maculinea (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae). In: Dempster, J.P., McLean, I.F.G. (eds) Insect Populations In theory and in practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4914-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4914-3_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6060-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4914-3
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