Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Journal of Experimental Biology
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Journal of Experimental Biology

  • Log in
Advanced search

RSS  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube  

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
INSIDE JEB
Butterflies manipulate proboscis to suck
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2014 217: 2031 doi: 10.1242/jeb.108803
Kathryn Knight
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Embedded Image

Elegantly sipping from drops of nectar, most butterflies have no idea of the mystery surrounding their drinking technique. Konstantin Kornev, from Clemson University, USA, explains that although the delicately tapered proboscis looks like an elaborate drinking straw, calculations show that the insect would paradoxically have to produce sucking pressures of more than 1 atmosphere to draw sugary fluids through the structure. Kornev and his colleagues wondered whether the insects were overcoming these challenges by flexing and moving the proboscis to alleviate the constriction and reduce the pressures required. Teaming up with Chen-Chih Tsai, Daria Monaenkova, Charles Beard and Peter Adler, Kornev began characterising how monarch butterflies use their proboscises for sipping (p. 2130).

After filming how the proboscis moved while the butterflies sucked, the team saw that the insects use a combination of four strategies: they splay the tip of the proboscis, slide both sides of the tube back and forth, pulse the proboscis and press the tip against the surface that the droplet is sitting on. The team suspects that these factors aid the passage of fluid through the proboscis by widening the tapered tip, altering the way in which the meniscus travels along the structure and augmenting the suction power of the cibarial pump to reduce the suction required to pull fluid through the proboscis.

  • © 2014. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

References

    1. Tsai, C.-C.,
    2. Monaenkova, D.,
    3. Beard, C. E.,
    4. Adler, P. H. and
    5. Kornev, K. G.
    (2014). Paradox of the drinking-straw model of the butterfly proboscis. J. Exp. Biol. 217, 2130-2138.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Journal of Experimental Biology.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Butterflies manipulate proboscis to suck
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Journal of Experimental Biology
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Journal of Experimental Biology web site.
Share
INSIDE JEB
Butterflies manipulate proboscis to suck
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2014 217: 2031 doi: 10.1242/jeb.108803
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
INSIDE JEB
Butterflies manipulate proboscis to suck
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2014 217: 2031 doi: 10.1242/jeb.108803

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • References
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Spittlebugs snorkel in cuckoo spit
  • Returning chum salmon shift metabolism to cope with different river temperatures
  • Navigation: from animal behaviour to guiding principles
Show more INSIDE JEB

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Biology Open

Advertisement

Featured article – Colour blindness test gets submerged

Cartoon fish having Ishihara's colour vision test

John Endler and team have come up with a new way to test animal colour vision based on methods to determine whether humans are ‘colour blind’, and they demonstrate how this method works with triggerfish.


Editorial - Thanking our peer reviewers in 2018

Thank you to our peer reviewers

We value the time and expertise of our reviewers and would like to publicly thank all those who have contributed to our peer review process in the past year.


Editors' choice - Global dynamics of bipedal macaques during grounded and aerial running

Macaque 'walking'

Trained macaques that can walk on two legs never seemed to run, but Naomichi Ogihara and team show that they run all the time, although their legs are too springy for them to get off the ground, and they can take off like runners when moving at top speed.


Conversation - Early-career researchers: an interview with Danielle Levesque

Danielle Levesque, Assistant Professor at the University of Maine

Danielle Levesque is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maine, USA, where she studies hibernation and torpor in mammals. She told us how her research has taken her to Madagascar and Borneo, and why she thinks it is important to learn coding.

Read more of our interviews with early-career researchers on our Interviews page.


Journal news - Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding Paper Prize 2018

Outstanding Paper Prize winners Till Harter, Mike Sackville and Dave Metzinger

Prize winners Till Harter, Mike Sackville and Dave Metzinger

We are delighted to announce the shortlist of papers nominated by the journal Editors for the 2018 award. Featuring topics as wide-ranging as the development of oxygen transport in snapping turtle embryos, the factors that cause cold flies to fall into a coma and the visual features that influence flying hoverflies, the shortlist celebrates the journal's diversity. Special congratulations go to Colin Brauner's team at the University of British Columbia, winner of this year's Outstanding Paper Prize.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Special issues
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About JEB
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Workshops and Meetings
  • The Company of Biologists
  • Journal news

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Outstanding paper prize
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact JEB
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

 Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2019   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992