Common Pierrot (Castalius rosimon) basking in the sun 🦋 ☀️ 

In the butterfly world, basking is the process of sun-bathing that helps increase temperature in the wing muscles to bring the insects in a physiological condition making them able to take off to their flight. 

Butterfly fly at their very best ecological conditionwhen the air temperature ranges from 24°C to 32°C. The reason for this is that they don‟t have to stop and warm their wings up. 

If the winds are cooler, many butterflies perch on flowers and leaves in the sun, usually laying them flat down and facing upward at the sun, so they can get the best exposure. When temperature rises butterflies seek shadey places.

Butterfly basking can be categorized into three types. These are lateral, dorsal and reflectance basking. Lateral basking occur when butterfly wings are folded and facing the sun. When the wings are fully open at 180° (or 90° with respect to the direct solar, radiation) the behaviour is called dorsal basking (Casey 1981). Dorsal basking is the most common type of basking. The third type basking is called reflectance. In this case, the wings are used to reflect the sun light to the butterfly‟s body rather than absorb it.

Pic & Post: Swarna Chakrabarty, Svasara Naturalist