The King’s Hairstreak is a butterfly. This butterfly has an illustrious blue spot with orange on its hind wing and the body is a cocoa brown. This butterfly lives in the habitats of Maryland and Delaware to the coastlines of Texas, but also seen in North Carolina.
Butterflies and moths belong to the Lepidoptera family meaning they are scaled winged insects. It is an endangered species and the population has been on the decline. One of the primary reasons is the forest habitats disappearance, due to land development. Rapid climate change with the temperatures during the spring has increased in the last few years from too cold to hot. Another is due to their low reproduction rate and the survival of the eggs. Lastly, the gypsy moth is a threat if their growth continues the reason being in the spring insecticide spray is used to control this pest, but also kills the habitat the King Hairstreak butterfly eats (Vaughan and Shepard, 2005). The Kings Hairstreak feed on foliage called Common Sweetleaf Pictures were from WordPress …show more content…
Maryland ranks the King Hairstreak into the category of S1 distinction meaning critically rare in Maryland being fewer than five estimated. The Wildlife and Heritage Division (MDNR, 2001) actively tracked this species.
The butterfly lays single eggs over the winter and before hatching in the spring the larvae feeds on foliage, the insecticide spray used on the gypsy moth is detrimental to the Kings Hairstreak. The habitat forest area, if ever burned, will not entice the butterfly to live and is another threat to the species reproduction population. As Vaughan and Shephard (2005) studied the Kings Hairstreak, the tracking shows below from Delaware, Maryland, Florida, and the Gulf coast to Texas. The map below was extracted from US Geological