As the dog days of a Texas summer start to blend into the damp breeze of autumn, you may have spotted small factions of brown butterflies flitting across the highway and through the bushes.
These little winged creatures are not dead leaves as they pretend to be, but snout butterflies — so named for their distinctive elongated mouths. Native to the area, snouts are present in San Antonio year-round , unlike their majestic migratory cousins the monarch butterfly.
Snout butterflies often experience significant blooms during the spring and fall. A bloom is a seasonal increase in the population of an insect, often coinciding with specific flowering plants the species needs to survive and reproduce.
This year’s fall bloom of snout butterflies is somewhat late in the season, noted Molly Keck, entomologist and integrated pest management program specialist for San Antonio’s Texas AgriLife Extension office.
“We typically see them emerge in mass from Labor Day through October, and we’re at the tail end of that,” Keck said. She added that when snouts bloom depends largely on when resources become most available, with snouts being highly dependent on the hackberry tree, as it’s their preferred host plant for their larvae.
After big bouts of rain, hackberry trees are sprouting fresh growth, which is why snouts tend to experience a bloom — more of their caterpillar offspring survive long enough to turn into pupae, Keck explained. The snouts are likely late this year simply due to there being less rain over the summer than there has been over the last couple of weeks, she noted.
As pollinators, snout butterflies may not be as well-known as bees or some other butterflies, however, they can contribute significantly to pollination by feeding on nectar from various flowers.
The snout butterfly is generally not considered threatened, but scientists do say that habitat loss and environmental changes could impact local populations.
