Top 20 Most Common Insects in Grenoble

Interestingly, individuals belonging to orange tip (Anthocharis cardamines) occupy different habitats depending on gender: the males inhabit the edges of forests, whereas the females prefer meadows. When laying eggs, females release pheromones to deter other females from laying eggs on the same flowerhead. They are picky about choosing their host plants, and females will avoid plants not fully exposed to sunlight.

The painted lady is a migratory butterfly that spends part of the year in Northern Africa and then migrates to Europe during the warmer months. Although the adults feed on nectar from flowers, the larvae feed on the leaves of nettles and thistles.

The speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) prefers to live in damp, dark woodlands. Unlike other butterflies, it's more active in shadier habitats rather than sunny ones. Males often fight over a perch, spiraling up to the treetops until they determine a winner. These perches are where the males find passing females.

Common brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) is an attractive species of butterfly; males display iridescence and have yellow wings, whereas females have white-green, non-iridescent wings. This species is wholly reliant on two species of buckthorn plant to lay its eggs. Consequently, the larvae consume large amounts of buckthorn.

Its slow and floating flight pattern makes it easy to identify the scarce swallowtail as it soars over gardens, orchards, and scrublands. The butterfly has a large presence across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The adult lifespan is brief, only two or three weeks. Planting flowers like blackthorn can encourage the butterfly to visit a garden.

Colias croceus has a wingspan of 46–54 millimetres (1.8–2.1 in). The upperside of the wings is golden to orange yellow with a broad black margin on all four wings and a black spot near the centre forewing. Usually these butterflies settles with its wings closed, consequently the black margin of the uppersides of the wings is difficultly visible. The underside lacks the black borders and is lighter, with a more greenish tint, particularly on the forewings. In the forewing underside is the same dark spot as on the upperside, but often with a light centre; the hindwing underside has a white centre spot, often with a smaller white or dark dot immediately above it. Sometimes, a row of black dots occurs on the underwings' outer margins, corresponding to where the black border ends on the upperside. Females differ from the males in having yellow spots along the black borders on the upperside. In flight, Colias croceus is easily identifiable by the intense yellow colouring, much brighter than that of the lemon-yellow male common brimstone which also lacks black markings. Like all Colias species they never open their wings at rest. In a small proportion of females (about 5%) the golden upperside colouration is replaced by a pale cream colour. These females have been distinguished as form helice. The pale form helice does not seem to be that distinct as intermediates exist and the variation is to some extent related to humidity during development, with dryer conditions producing paler colouration. These pale forms helice can be confused with Berger's clouded yellow (Colias alfacariensis) and the rarer Pale clouded yellow (Colias hyale). Even the palest C. croceus tends to have more black on the upperside however, in particular on the hindwings. Young caterpillars are yellow-green, with a black head. Later they become completely dark green, with a white red spotted lateral line after the third moult. The pupae are green and have a yellow side stripe. This species is rather similar to Colias myrmidone, Colias chrysotheme, Colias erate, Colias hyale, Colias alfacariensis, Colias caucasica, Colias aurorina.

Ischnura elegans can reach a body length of 2.5 - 3.5 cm and a wingspan of about 3.5 cm. Hindwings reach alength of 1.4 - 2 cm. Adult male blue-tailed damselflies have a head and thorax patterned with blue and black. There is a bi-coloured pterostigma on the front wings. Eyes are blue. They have a largely black abdomen with very narrow pale markings where each segment joins the next. Segment eight, however, is entirely pale blue. At rest, the wings of most damselfly species are held back together, unlike dragonflies, which rest with their wings out flat. The thorax of juvenile males has a green tinge. Female blue-tailed Damselflies come in a variety of colour forms.Juveniles may be salmon pink, form rufescens; violet, form violacea and a pale green form. The colour darkens as the damselfly ages. Mature females may be blue like the male, form typica; olive green thorax and brown spot, form infuscans or pale brown thorax and brown spot, form infusca-obseleta.

The large fritillary is fiery reddish yellow above, the basal area of the male being always duller. The markings are constant: a black margin, a row of deep black but thin marginal arcs, a very straight, central row of dots, of which only the last one of the forewing is shifted distad; between this row of dots and the base there are six thin black transverse bands extending from the subcostal vein into the wing. The underside of the hindwing is characteristic; it bears numerous silver-spots on a partly verdigris partly leather-yellow ground, but never a row of ocelli in the marginal area, as is the case in the forms of the Niobe fritillary (Fabriciana niobe) and high brown fritillary (F. adippe).

Lysandra coridon has a wingspan of 30–36 millimetres (1.2–1.4 in). These small butterflies present a sexual dimorphism. The males having pale silvery-blue upperside of the wings with a submarginal line of grey spots on the hindwings and a thin brown and white chequered fringe. Females have dark brown upperside of wings, with marginal orange spots and also with chequered fringes. The underside of the wings show a light ochre colouration, several dark spots surrounded by white, a submarginal line of black marks, a series of marginal orange spots on the hindwings and a blue dusting near the body. As with many blue butterflies, separation from similar species in the field is on the underside markings. Aberrations are common.

Male above red-golden, with a narrow black margin, at the proximal side of which there are dark dots on the hindwing: female cinnabar-red, spotted with black, the hindwing partly dusted with black. Underside leather-yellow, more sparsely spotted with black, before the outer third of the hind- wing pale dots, which are occasionally united in a white chain. The anal area dusted with red. The species occurs from the Atlantic coasts throughout Europe to East- Siberia and from the coast of the North Sea to the Mediterranean, but is absent from Great Britain and Japan. — In Lapland flies a small form, oranula Frr. (76 b), which is otherwise very similar to the name-typical form. — estonica Huene (76 b), from the Baltic provinces and eastern Russia, exactly resembles the preceding in size and shape, but has a broader black margin. — virgaureola Stgr. (76 b) is in size like virgaureae, but the upperside of the male is as in estonica; beneath the more reddish disc of the forewing contrasts with the more yellow hindwing and the white discal stripe of the latter is absent or reduced; from northern Central Asia, Dauria, Mongolia, and as similar aberration in the Swiss Alps. — males from the Apennines, in which the upperside is deeper red-golden and the base of the hindwing more densely dusted with dark, are apennina Calb. The females the contrary have the ground-colour paler and are less dusted with dark than many Central European specimens, the underside being hghter. According to Fallou the males from the Pyrenees are also deeper red. - On the other hand, the specimens from Mersina and the neighbouring Taurus Mts. have a bright light golden-red upperside in both sexes, the black margin being narrowed in the male. This is aureomicans Heyne. — Specimens with the underside of the hindwing strongly dusted with grey, the upperside of the female more-over having a brown-grey tint on account of the dark dusting on the golden ground, occur in many alpine districts with the ordinary form, being especially plentiful and well marked in the Alps of Valais; all such individuals are united as ab. zermattensis Fall. (76 a). It is hardly possible to decide from Fallou's very long description of this form which are the real characteristics of his aberration, so that strictly speaking not all the specimens standing in collections under this name belong here, particularly not all the specimens from the Valais; in fact only those individuals are true ab. zermattensis which, like phlaeas caeruleopunctata, have a chain of white dots before the outer third of the hindwing, as shown in the figure given in Ann. Soc. Ent. Fr. vol. V. pl. 2. Besides the modification of the colour of the upperside into sepia-brown, both sexes differ on the underside in the forewing bearing a broad dark margin and the hindwing being washed with fuscous, ab. seriata Fruhst. are zermattensis females which have a discal row of white dots on the hindwing proximally to the row of black spots, ab. fredegunda Fruhst. bears, besides those dots, a row of submarginal spots on the forewing beneath. [more vars described]The egg is semiglobular, grey-green, with a network of polygons, laid singly or several together on the stalk of the foot-plant. Larva green with a yellow stripe on back and at the sides, brownish head and brownish legs; at first glassy, transparent, later yellow on the back. Emerges in April and feeds until June on Rumex and Solidago. Pupa rounded, smooth, similar to a small bean, brownish, with dark markings; on the thorax a dark dorsal longitudinal stripe, which is continued on the abdomen by a row of impressed dots. The butterflies are on the wing from the end of June into August on meadows, clearings in woods, mountain-sides and flowery slopes; they are abundant almost everywhere in the area aru:! ascend in the high mountains above 10,000 ft.