Need of data

[School work]

Hello !
We're french students and we're studying butterflies for our exams. We desperalty need the weight, the length, the wingspan, the beating frequency of these following butterflies:
papilio phorcas
papilio paris
battus philenor
siproeta epaphus
papilion memnon
parides sesostris
greta oto
Anartia amathea
Dryas julia
If it's possible, can you send us a picture of these butterflies on a sheet of graph paper ?
Thanks a lot !

[Jack Harrison]

Sorry I can't help but I have to say that I am impressed that the French education system investigates such topics. It would never happen in our country (shame).

Jack

[David M]

It should be possible to discover the average wing span of these species by searching online resources.

Good luck with the other requirements though. I've personally never seen statistics on weight and frequency of wing beat.

[Jack Harrison]

I have to be a cynic here. The original request was written in surprisingly perfect English [for foreigners] complete with apostrophes in the right places. The list of species was somewhat obscure.

This isn't April First is it?

Jack

[Chris Jackson]

The lack of an "and" in place of the comma here : wingspan, the beating frequency does derive from French punctuation habits.
The mystery continues.
Chris

[Jack Harrison]

The lack of an "and" in place of the comma here : wingspan, the beating frequency, does derive from French punctuation habits.

Incorrect grammar of the sort that I make all the time (when not being pedantic).

Earlier in the original post there was the spelling : desperalty

That strikes me as a native English speaker's typical typo.

Jack

[JohnR]

When would the French use a lower case f and not introduce themselves as French Students ?

[David M]

IIRC, it's not capitalised when used as an adjective - eg Je parle le français, je suis étudiant français, etc. However, when expressed as a noun it is - les Français adorent les papillons. (Chris, is this right or am I imagining it?)

[Chris Jackson]

IIRC, it's not capitalised when used as an adjective - eg Je parle le français, je suis étudiant français, etc. However, when expressed as a noun it is - les Français adorent les papillons. (Chris, is this right or am I imagining it?)

Hi JohnR.

You're right David. You just pipped me to the post here concerning this very interesting, and possibly hoax, request.
I will follow on in a short while.

David,
A true French person may, for the reasons you raise, omit to put a capital F on French when writing in English. C'est normal.
However, we can observe that this person has also neglected a capital letter on the genus of his/her taxons.
One explanation could be the use of a tablet, which makes the use of capitals, where necessary, more of a task.

Chris

[Padfield]

You're partly right, David. But in your first example, 'le français', that is a noun, not an adjective - and correctly not capitalised. The word is capitalised when it is used as a noun to designate a person, rather than the language.

Welcome, School Work! For my part, I don't doubt you are French!!

You will find it difficult to obtain this data. If I were your teacher, I would capitalise on your enthusiasm by arranging a day-trip to the nearest butterfly house. There, you could video a selection of species and calculate wingbeat frequency from your videos (by slowing them down and counting). The ones you mention are all butterfly-house species, but you won't find them all present on any given day, even in the best butterfly house. If you gave the butterfly house advance warning, they might be able to provide dead individuals of many of the species for you to weigh - they must clear up dozens of naturally deceased butterflies every day. But you need very sensitive scales to weigh butterflies! Size data for all these species can be found with a simple Google search - most have a Wikipedia page.

If you are able to obtain the data and draw any interesting conclusions, please do let us know!

Bonne chance,

Guy

EDIT - talking of grammar, I've edited this post about a dozen times to remove weird gremlins that kept altering what I had written. That really is a mystery.

[Chris Jackson]

Concerning wing beat rates, this could be variable depending on the flight phase: hilltopping (gliding), sparring, battling, jousting, rejecting amourous advances, wafting pheromones, ovipositing, nectaring in hover .
Is there a standardised method of calculating a mean value ?
Chris

[Chris Jackson]

Hello !...
If it's possible, can you send us a picture of these butterflies on a sheet of graph paper ?
Thanks a lot !

Which scale of graph paper would you prefer ?

Chris

[David M]

Which scale of graph paper would you prefer ?

Yes, that's the really odd part.

[millerd]

Back in my schooldays when there were French exchange students around, I always noticed that where we would use lined paper, they would use notebooks full of what resembled graph paper. That's what you would find in the French equivalent of W.H.Smith as well - notebooks full of graph paper.

Maybe this is relevant?

Dave

[Jack Harrison]

Significant perhaps that there has been no reaction from School work since start of this thread.
I remain, as I said near the start, a cynic.

Jack

[bugboy]

You can tell it's the 'off' season when a thread like this gets so much in depth attention

[Jack Harrison]

School Work: Where are you located? A Google map with pointer for example would help.

ukb has quite a number of French speaking members. Perhaps you might ask - in French - exactly what you mean by "picture of these butterflies on a sheet of graph paper"? as that is confusing for us English speakers.

Jack

[MikeOxon]

Hello School Work,

You will see from the comments in this thread that your request has caused some confusion here. The butterflies you have listed are all tropical species and certainly are not found here in UK Most members on this site are interested in recording the behaviour of our local butterflies in the wild. We are not collectors and do not like the idea of killing and mounting set specimens.

I think Guy Padfield has given you some good advice. A search in Wikipedia will give you some of the information you want. For example, if you enter Papilio memnon, you will see that this is a large butterfly with 120 - 150 mm wing span and there are several good photos as well.

The other information will be more difficult and I think the suggestion to visit a tropical butterfly house is the best way to find out more. The staff at these places are usually knowledgeable and will be pleased to help you with your project.

I visited South East Asia myself, quite recently, and saw some of the butterflies you have listed in the wild. Their behaviour is very variable - sometimes they glide with very few wing beats but they also hover while feeding from flowers and then their wings beat very rapidly. You can see photos of them on my website at http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming ... utterflies

I wish you success with your project and hope you will come back and let us know what you find. I also congratulate you on your excellent English which made some people here think you could not be French

Mike

[School work]

Hello ! Thanks for all your answers.
We actually went in a butterfly house and filmed these butterflies (that's why there are tropical species). We calculated the wingbeat frequency. We also have dead individuals. We wanted to see if our values were correct ...
We'll have to check what kind of flight phase we filmed...
If you have any values on UK's butterflies, we're interested !
Thanks for your help

PS: By graph paper, we meant "millimeter paper".. I don't know how to translate it.. It's just to give us a scale on the picture ...
I'm flattered that some of you think that we're not French !

[MikeOxon]

It seems that you are already doing all the right things! I suggest one thing you could look for is a relationship between muscle weight and the speed at which these species beat their wings. In our British butterflies, the 'Skippers' are notable for their fast flight with very rapid wing beats. Although they are small butterflies, they have fat bodies, which house the large muscles needed for rapid flight. In the tropical species, Swallowtails often feed while hovering in front of a flower. This also needs powerful muscles and these species then to have correspondingly large bodies.