Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 18 January 2000 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news000120-6
News
Sex-crazed butterfly swarms
The bacteria Wolbachia drives some female butterflies in which it lives to take desperate measures in their hunt for new mates, reports Eleanor Lawrence.
The 18th century satirist Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver's Travels fame, once remarked: "So, naturalists observe, a flea / Hath smaller fleas that on him prey / And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em / And so proceed ad infinitum."
He might have made much of the effects of the bacterium Wolbachia, a parasite which has an even more unfortunate effect on one of its hosts, the African butterfly '_Acraea encedon_', also known as the Common or White-barred Acraea.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
There are currently no comments.
