What's this?

A lady beetle, aka ladybug, sharing stories with Gulf Fritillary caterpillars?

Well, not likely.

The lady beetle (family Coccinellidae) preys mainly on aphids--it can eat about 50 aphids a day or some 5000 aphids in its lifetime. But it will devour other soft-bodied insects, including mites, scales, mealybugs, leafhoppers, and butterfly eggs and larvae (caterpillars). Butterfly caterpillars move quite slowly; they are not Indy 500 speedsters.

We spotted a lady beetle early this morning on one of our passionflower (Passiflora) seed pods, surrounded by hungry Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) caterpillars. It was  somewhat like a two-peas-in-a-pod scene, but without the peas.  Here were two insect species ON a pod, and both sharing the same warning color: red.

The Gulf Fritillary caterpillars are hungry.  Very hungry. They've stripped the passionflower vine of all its leaves and are now eating the stems and seed pods. Actually, we planted the passionflower vine for them.  But are they THAT hungry? They are. They're famished. And there are literally hundreds of them.

Sometimes we think that all of the Gulf Frit butterflies west of Mississippi are gravitating toward the plant to lay their eggs. The vine cannot support that many hungry caterpillars,  despite predation by scrub jays and European paper wasps.

The lady beetle, we assume is not only eating the tiny yellow eggs of the Gulf Frit, but the tiniest of the tiny larvae.  It's an exquisite buffet of tasty treats with high nutritional value.

And easy pickings.