Blog Action Day - The Butterfly Effect

Happy Blog Action Day. This year’s topic is climate change.

Will butterflies be affected by global climate change? Of course they will- there’s growing evidence that some species are already being affected. There are several types of changes that can be anticipated in response to a warmer climate. Species’ ranges could shift pole-ward. Alpine species could shift their ranges to higher elevations, and species found at low elevations near mountains could become alpine species. Phenology- the timing of events that happen annually- might also change. Some species might begin flying earlier in the spring. The appearance of a larger number of generations annually is also a possibility.

Silver-bordered Fritillary

As with so many things involving butterfly study, the first evidence of shifting range patterns appears to have been reported in Great Britain (the Brits typically rock in terms of appreciation for and study of butterflies). As of 2007, the British group Butterfly Conservation was reporting range expansion of 15 species, and attributed this to climate change. In the late 1990’s I thought that we were seeing something similar here in Illinois. A southern species called the fiery skipper migrates into this area late in the summer. They typically don’t arrive in great numbers, and some years they don’t show up much at all. In the late nineties, they began showing up routinely in larger numbers and on more northern Illinois butterfly monitoring sites. Was this an early indicator of climate change? This observation, which repeated over four years, did not persist and numbers eventually returned to their former levels. More recently, evidence has been published (subscription required) documenting a range expansion of the Sachem Skipper as a result of warmer winters.

Here in the Midwest, we may be seeing examples of species’ ranges retreating northward. We are at the southern edge of the ranges of the Silvery Blue and the Silver-bordered Fritillary. The blue may have recently become extinct in Illinois. The fritillary, which is faring poorly across much of the southern edge of its range, is the subject of some significant conservation efforts here at work.

Silvery Blue

Perhaps the species with the most frustrating outlook are some of the alpine groups. Rare species like the Uncompahgre fritillary live near the tops of mountains. In a warming world, they have only so far that they can move up before their only available habitat vanishes like a puddle evaporating in the hot sun.

I’m not a climatologist. About the only thing that I can do to evaluate the various claims is to try to determine where a particular claim falls on the consensus/contentious continuum. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that we will lose species- perhaps a great number of them- as climate change continues to unfold. This represents a source of great sadness to me, and is part of the motivation for my working in conservation. What can you do? Specifically with regard to butterflies, some of the most important things folks can do include supporting local ecological restoration activities. If you’re feeling really ambitious, there are a number of citizen-science projects around the country where folks can go out and count butterflies near where they live. The data collected help guide a lot of conservation decisions.

Blog Action Day

Thanks to the many people that I have bugged (you're welcome) for participating in Blog Action Day. I wondered what to write for this. I could say that every day is Blog Action Day at Gossamer Tapestry. And while it's true that I blog about environmental issues a lot, that struck me as a bit smug. I debated over whether to compose an entirely new post or to link to some of my old ones. I have decided to do both. Below this posting you'l find something I put together specifically for today. In this posting, I provide linkes to some of my previous posts on envirnomental issues.

The post that best sums up what's behind my passion for the natural world is here, although this post also has a lot to do with it. I describe my work at Bluff Spring Fen in a bunch of posts, and there is also a whole lot of stuff about my work with butterfly conservation. Finally, there's a bunch of the natural world that I've experienced through travel, including some reflections on my favorite ecosystems.

One of Those Families

In celebration of Blog Action Day, I'm posting some memories spurred by the No Child Left Inside movement. This is a national move to reconnect kids with nature. It was spawned as a response to the influential book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. I am posting some rememberances of a family that did not experience nature-deficit disorder. That would be my birth family. For a lot of my readers, it's probably your family, too.


Growing up, there were any number of families in my home town whose identities revolved around one shared interest. The Cs were the sports family. Their four sons all dominated on the football and basketball teams in my high school. The Ss were the artistic family, the Ts were into music and the Ws were avid skiers. My family dabbled in several of these areas, but we weren’t immediately associated in everyone’s minds with them. We weren’t one of those families.

Mostly we hung out together. In our case, hanging out meant walks in the woods. Or fishing trips. Or weekend day trips to Cape Cod, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or the coast of Maine. Self-guided trails with their pamphlets identifying flora and geological features figured prominently on those weekends. We became adept at locating the brown and white signs along the highways- the ones that directed to various natural features. Trips to Cape Cod meant the nature trails that threaded the National Seashore. New Hampshire meant the Kancagamus Highway and Franconia Notch.

My family’s travel activities were extensions of the kinds of things that we enjoyed doing together while we were at home. We started feeding the birds when I was in kindergarten or the first grade. I got my first butterfly net from the Easter Bunny at about the same time. Audubon’s Birds of North America and The Golden Guide to the Butterflies and Moths were both well-thumbed volumes in my household. Even today, although I’m considered the one who knows all about butterflies- every member of my immediate family can still identify many of the common species from southern New England.

Butterflies figured prominently throughout growing up. I remember having a butterfly net with me for most of the summers through junior high school. Even in high school, I was keeping live butterflies, mostly smaller species like blues, alive for weeks in small cages, feeding them sugar water. I remember taking a caged American Copper butterfly with us when we went apple picking in southern New Hampshire and marveling at still having the live butterfly in my possession when it snowed that afternoon. How could I have known then that my future career was being played out that day?

I guess at the time that I never thought of us as being a science family. My parents had no formal science training- indeed my dad was the first member of his family to receive a college degree. I think that my parents were always a bit bemused- proud, but bemused- that all of their kids spent at least some of their professional lives in science. Of the six members of my generation- myself, two sibs, and our spouses- four of us today make our livings as scientists.

Our interest in science did not grow out of having parents who were scientists. It grew out of having parents who were in love with the natural world, and who took the time to share it with us. To this day, our family remains very aware of the environment and of the changes happening in it. I can’t imagine living any other way. After all, we were one of those families.

Blogging for the Environment - Blog Action Day

Monday, October 15 is Blog Action Day. It's a challenge to bloggers to post something related to the environment on that day.

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

A posting might be a photo, an essay, or a link to a previous post that you have done on the topic. The post need not be about the political aspects of the environment. A rememberance of a camping or hiking trip you particularly enjoyed, or a photo of the natural world would make great contributions. I've already signed on as a participant, you can join in here. Readers whose blogs I have linked to at the bottom of my blogroll (Science and Nature Blogs) may well already to be planning participation. So far, I know that the Dharma Bums are.

I'd like to challenge all of my readers who are also bloggers to post something on Monday. I typically don't "tag" folks for memes, but there are three readers not in the Science and Nature section of my blogroll who have previously expressed themselves well on this topic. So I'd like to extend personal invitations to UrSpo, Whirly Steve, and Mark H. to take part. Even if I haven't invited you personally, whether it's because you have said that you don't like being tagged (cough Homer cough), because I've never seen you write about the environment, or because you're likely to be participating anyway, why don't you give it a go? I'd love to see what everyone has to say.