BUTTERFLIES at the American Museum of Natural History

I made these photos of butterflies (live or preserved) last Saturday at the BUTTERFLY CONSERVATORY at the AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, a re-created tropical forest environment filled with over 500 live butterflies. The conservatory will run through May 25, 2009. The museum is located at Central Park West at 79th Street in Manhattan.

Butterflies and moths make up a large group of insects known as the Order Lepidoptera (lep-i-DOP-ter-ah). The name—from the Greek lepido, "scale", and ptera, "wings"—refers to a prominent feature of adult butterflies and moths, the tiny scales that cover the wings and the rest of the body.

Adult butterflies are wonderfully diverse in shape, size, and color. Active during the day, they live almost everywhere around the world, from Arctic tundra to tropical rain forests.

There are more than 250,000 known species of Lepidoptera, of which about 18,000 are butterflies. Based on their anatomy, butterflies are classified into five families. This exhibition features butterflies from three of the families: the Pieridae (PYAIR-i-dee), commonly known as whites and sulphurs; the Papilionidae (pah-pill-ee-ON-i-dee), or swallowtails; and the Nymphalidae (nim-FAL-i-dee), which includes morphos, longwings and others.