The world of a butterfly

Just in time for the start of spring, we’ve published a new slideshow of high-resolution, close-up photographs that show the life cycle of the eastern black swallowtail butterfly. These amazing photographs by Kathryn Walbert show the egg, the emerging larva, the different instars or stages of growth of the larva, the larva becoming a chrysalis, and the newly emerged butterfly drying its wings. The accompanying captions tell you what’s going on at each stage. (And special thanks to Richard Stickney, the Butterfly Curator at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham, for checking our facts!)