Minibeasts – Minibeast life cycles

Spring is a great time of year to learn about minibeasts and their life cycles. Minibeasts are fascinating creatures that you've probably seen in the garden, in parks, and maybe even indoors. Minibeasts have incredible life cycles, sometimes completely transforming between stages.

What are minibeasts?

Minibeasts are basically small invertebrate animals (without a backbone). Examples of minibeasts are spiders, slugs, beetles, butterflies, earwigs, and many more. Did you know that Britain has more than 25,000 known species of invertebrates?

Properties of invertebrate animals.

Since invertebrates do not have a skeleton, they are usually soft and bend easily, which makes them quite vulnerable. Some species have a shell to live in, like a snail, or a harder outer skeleton (exoskeleton) that protects their soft body.

Why are Minibeasts useful?

Some Minibeasts are decomposers. They feed on dead leaves and other debris, releasing nutrients into the soil that plants can easily absorb.

Bees, butterflies and moths spread pollen, which fertilizes flowers.

Minibeasts are an important part of the food chain and are consumed by birds and other small mammals.

Minibeast life cycles

Butterfly life cycle

Diagram of the life cycle of a butterfly showing the four stages: eggs, caterpillar, pula and butterfly.

What is metamorphosis?

Did you know that butterflies and moths have four separate stages in their life cycle, each of which is very different and serves a different purpose? Between stages, there is a distinctive change in the animal's body structure, which we call metamorphosis.

The egg

The egg is small and round; the female butterfly attaches it to a leaf or stem on or near the food.

Caterpillar

The caterpillar, also known as the larva, looks a bit like a small worm and often has stripes and spine-like hairs. Caterpillars grow very quickly and shed their skin several times along the way.