What we wanted to understand by our experiments was how the different patterns on the two wing surfaces are created. But, before we go there, let us talk about how wings and their patterns develop in butterflies and what we currently know about this process. Butterflies, along with beetles, flies, moths, and wasps, fall into the category of holometabolous insects. This means that butterflies go through a complete metamorphosis, which is the transition from a larval, grub-like animal to an adult animal with wings, large slender legs, and big eyes. Butterflies have four different life stages during development. These are the embryonic stage (which takes place inside the egg), the larval (or caterpillar) stage, the pupal stage, and the adult stage. Eggs are laid on the leaves of specific plants and the caterpillars that hatch from the eggs eat these leaves until they enter the pupal stage. The pupal stage is when most of the larval body tissues are dissolved and re-formed to create the adult butterfly that finally emerges. The wings of butterflies are formed from a group of cells that are set aside during the embryonic stage, in the form of imaginal discs.

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