The American Snout butterflies are back in Bexar County. They're fluttering everywhere. They're leaving a splattered mess on cars and trucks. But they also play an important role in the region's ecology.
Molly Keck, an entomologist with the Bexar County office of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, said recent rainfall led to the healthy growth of hackberry bushes.
"Their favorite food source — and their main food source — is hackberry,” she explained. “And so when we have these pretty intense rains that hackberry starts to bud out ... there is enough food for the babies, and they live, and they all become adults.”
Keck added the calm, warm, sunny weather is perfect for flying for any airborne insect but especially for the delicate orange and beige butterflies.
Some people may be concerned that there are so many butterflies everywhere they go. Keck said not to worry. They're not pests. The butterflies are both harmless and important.
"They're not going to hurt your plants or anything like that,” she said. “As adults, they are pollinators, so just kind of enjoy them.”
Keck added in a 2022 discussion with "The Texas Standard" that the butterflies are also "a food source for birds, for lizards and other things that prey on caterpillars." The Extension Service explained that they try to dodge those predators by closing their wings, which makes them resemble dead leaves.
They're everywhere, but are they going anywhere? Is this a migration? Keck said not really. “They're kind of just flying around,” she said. “We call it a migration, but it's not a true migration. There's no direction or endpoint. They are just flying around, looking for a place to mate or a place to lay their eggs again."
The Extension Service explained that they're named Snout butterflies because of the long mouths on the adults, used to sip nectar. Texas has two subspecies: Libytheana bachmanii, or Kirtland, and Libytheana larvata, or Strecker.
American snouts are named for their prominent proboscises. Here's a close-up pic.twitter.com/O1szuvmeXW
— Texas Parks & Wildlife (@TPWDnews) September 25, 2024
Caterpillars hatch from the eggs, munch mostly on the hackberry bushes, and grow into adult butterflies in a little more than two weeks. They enjoy nectar, pollinate here and there, and then mate. The females lay their own eggs, and the cycle begins again.
There are lots of them, so drivers shouldn't worry about the toll their cars are taking on the populations. Keck said that they're not endangered. Besides, they won't be around for much longer. The butterflies live for just a few weeks.
Once they're gone, the car washes can safely resume.
The Texas Standard's Alexandra Hart contributed to this report.
