How some butterflies developed the ability to change their eyespot size

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

by eLife

New insight on how a butterfly species developed the ability to adjust its wing eyespot size in response to temperature has been published today in eLife.

The study reveals that the African satyrid butterfly Bicyclus anynana (B. anynana), a member of the sub-family of the nymphalidae (or 'brush-footed') butterflies, changes its eyespot size using a complex physiological and molecular response that evolved gradually over millions of years. The findings also highlight that while temperature modulates hormone levels in various species of satyrid butterfly, B. anynana is just one of a few that take advantage of this response to regulate eyespot size.

Many butterflies in the nymphalidae family have circular eyespot patterns on their wings that are typically used to deflect attacks from predators. However, in certain seasons, such as the dry season in Africa, the butterflies' best survival strategy is to avoid drawing attention to themselves, and they will shrink the size of their eyespots to make them look like a dead leaf.

How butterflies accomplish this feat has only been studied in one species of African satyrid, B. anynana. In this species, low temperatures that signal the arrival of the dry season lower the quantity of a hormone called 20E during the late larval stage. This alters the function of hormone-sensitive cells in the centre of the eyespots and subsequently shrinks their size.

"For our study, we investigated how this hormone-mediated system came to regulate the size of eyespots by examining the process in several other species of butterflies with and without eyespots," explains lead author Shivam Bhardwaj, who conducted this work as part of his doctoral research in the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Mississippi State University. "We wanted to find out which other species change their eyespot size in response to temperature and whether they achieve this through the same mechanism as B. anynana. This comparative work would allow us to explore for the first time how a temperature-regulated system evolves at the genetic and physiological level."

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US butterflies exhibit worrying decline

26/07/2019

A new study has discovered that butterfly numbers have decline by a third in the United States over the past two decades, echoing declines observed across Europe.

Tyson Wepprich of Oregon State University and his colleagues consulted volunteers at the Ohio Lepidopterists, a society that has been collecting weekly data on butterfly sightings across the state over the past two decades.

Wepperich explained: "We analysed their data to estimate trends for 81 species over this time and found that many more are declining than increasing. Overall, the number of butterflies you'd expect to see has fallen by 33 per cent, or at a rate of 2 per cent per year."

The overall declines reflect those witnessed across Europe, where well-established citizen science projects such as the currently ongoing Big Butterfly Count have documented contractions in both range and abundance of many species, including 'generalist' butterflies that should thereotically be more resistant to decline. 

Given that butterflies are used as a proxy for studying insects, the worrying trend also raises alarm bells about the health of other insect populations across North America.

As temperatures increased, Wepprich and his team found that species from the south moved north into Ohio and were growing in number, while numbers of more northerly species dropped away.

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How your mouldy bananas can bring life to your garden

This little trick can bring colour to your garden and help the environment

Tommy Joyce

05:00, 7 APR 2019

We all like to try and reduce waste, make the most from our money and bring a bit of life to our garden.

Also, according to some reports, more than 1.4 million edible bananas get thrown out each day in Britain.

This little trick can ensure you get the most out of your bananas.

Butterflies go bananas for bananas

Butterflies love bananas, and ones past their sell-by date in particular.

By hanging them up in your garden you can expect plenty of them to flock for a sugary treat and they will 'stay for hours'.

Robin Chausse let people know of her discovery on Facebook and her advice got more than 185,000 shares - people can't get enough of her banana milkshake bringing all the butterflies to her yard.

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Rare UK butterflies enjoy best year since monitoring began

Hot summer of 2018 boosted large blue, and black hairstreak, but small tortoiseshell declined

Patrick Barkham

Mon 8 Apr 2019 06.30 BSTLast modified on Mon 8 Apr 2019 11.48 BST

The golden summer of 2018 saw two of the UK’s rarest butterflies, the large blue and the black hairstreak, enjoy their best years since scientific monitoring began.

More than two-thirds of British butterfly species were seen in higher numbers last year than in 2017, but despite the ideal butterfly weather, it was still only an average season – the 18th best in 43 years of recording.

Species whose caterpillars feed on grasses struggled as grass withered in hot weather, while there were mysterious ongoing declines for the small tortoiseshell and the peacock, both garden favourites. Despite the warmth, both butterflies had their third-worst year since the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme – the longest-running scientific insect monitoring project in the world – began in 1976.

Prof Tom Brereton of Butterfly Conservation said: “There were not as many butterflies around as we might have expected given the fabulous weather over much of the butterfly season, and overall, 2018 ranked as barely better than average.

Continued

Butterfly numbers fall by 84% in Netherlands over 130 years – study

European insect populations shrink as farming leaves ‘hardly any room for nature’

Patrick Barkham

Mon 1 Apr 2019 11.47 BSTLast modified on Mon 1 Apr 2019 13.36 BST

Butterflies have declined by at least 84% in the Netherlands over the last 130 years, according to a study, confirming the crisis affecting insect populations in western Europe.

Researchers analysed 120,000 butterflies caught by collectors between 1890 and 1980 as well as more recent scientific data from more than 2 million sightings to identify dramatic declines in the country’s 71 native butterfly species, 15 of which have become extinct over the last century.

“We are quite sure that the real decline must be much larger,” said Chris van Swaay, of Dutch Butterfly Conservation and one of the co-authors of the study.

The research follows warnings of catastrophic insect declines after a global review calculated that the total mass of insects was falling by 2.5% each year, and a German study found average flying insect abundance had declined by 76% over 27 years.

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Butterflies thrive in grasslands surrounded by forest

February 4, 2019, Linköping University

For pollinating butterflies, it is more important to be close to forests than to agricultural fields, according to a study of 32,000 butterflies by researchers at Linköping University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala. The results provide important knowledge about how to plan and manage the landscape to ensure the survival of butterflies.

Semi-natural grasslands are one of Sweden's most species-rich habitats, with a multitude of plants and butterflies. However, the amount of these areas has been reduced by 90% in the past 100 years. Semi-natural grasslands are often preserved as just small fragments in the landscape. Their loss has led to many species of butterfly being decimated, and in some cases eliminated from parts of Sweden. The researchers who carried out the new study, published in the scientific journal Landscape Ecology, have investigated how the landscape around these fragments influences different species of butterfly in southern Sweden. A total of 32,000 butterflies from 77 species were found.

"Several of our results are really exciting, and demonstrate that the species richness of semi-natural grasslands is influenced by other factors than the properties of the grasslands themselves. The surrounding landscape is also important for butterflies. If the semi-natural grasslands are embedded within large regions of arable land, the number of species is reduced", says Karl-Olof Bergman, senior lecturer in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, IFM.

The species richness of butterflies was in general greater in locations where large areas of semi-natural grasslands lay within 10-20 kilometres around the studied semi-natural grassland. Another important landscape feature linked to a larger number of butterfly species was if the grasslands were surrounded by forest.

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Butterflies: Fallen through the net?

Date:  December 12, 2018

Source:  Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

The "Natura 2000" network of protected areas runs across the EU as a conservation network for biodiversity. However, only a few studies have so far analysed whether these refuges actually have a positive effect on species diversity. Studies have predominately focussed on birds and have not shown any clear trends. Using long-term data from the "Butterfly Monitoring Germany" citizens' research project, scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Halle, Germany, and the Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic, have now investigated the matter using butterflies as an example. According to the research, there are more butterfly species in Natura 2000 areas than elsewhere. However, in the journal Diversity and Distributions the researchers reported the same decline in the numbers of species regardless whether the communities are located within or outside the protected areas.

The idea in itself is sound: A mosaic of protected forests, grasslands, lakes, rivers and other habitats designed to provide shelter for Europe's endangered plants and animals. The EU has been developing this "Natura 2000" network of protected areas since 1992. It now covers over 18% of the EU's land surface and is one of the most important building blocks for European nature conservation. But the question remains how effective this network actually is. Can it indeed stop the rampant loss of species? A research team led by Martin Musche from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Halle investigated this question using butterflies as an example.

It is no coincidence that the researchers used this species group for their analysis. On the one hand, there are numerous butterflies with particular habitat requirements and are therefore representative for many other species. Consequently, they are regarded as highly suitable indicators for the conditions of a landscape. What is more, they also play an important role in the ecosystem as pollinators, herbivores, and as a food source for birds and other animals.

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Black hairstreaks found miles from their heartland

This rare species was only discovered in 1828. Now the population is enjoying a boom

Patrick Barkham

Fri 29 Jun 2018 21.30 BSTLast modified on Fri 29 Jun 201822.56 BST

The black hairstreak is a dark, elusive and rather plain little butterfly. And yet it inspires great passion, and not just because of its rarity.

There’s something deeply restful and lovely about this midsummer insect, especially when it lets you creep close and admire it sunning itself on blackthorn.

It only flies for a couple of weeks in June, and guidebooks say it is only found in middle England woodlands, roughly between Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire.

But this butterfly has bamboozled experts since it was belatedly discovered in 1828 and this June has seen a glorious population explosion. Black hairstreaks have been discovered on many new sites, including miles from their heartland – in East Sussex.

Readon

Dry weather boosts UK's most endangered butterfly

High brown fritillary population rises due to harsh winter and sunny spring

Steven Morris

Mon 2 Jul 2018 00.01 BST

The combination of a harsh winter and sunny May and June has given the population of the UK’s most endangered butterfly, the high brown fritillary, a welcome boost.

Volunteers have been counting rare butterflies in a wooded valley on the Devon coast, which has been the focus of a project to encourage species such as the high brown fritillary.

Matthew Oates, a National Trust volunteer and one of the UK’s leading butterfly experts, said: “The butterfly seems to be having a very good year, with over 200 seen during the count.

“Ideal weather conditions; a cold and harsh winter, which has helped knock back the bracken and then a warm and sunny May and June have been ideal for caterpillar development.

“As we are having some fairly dry weather, it’s now the perfect time for seeing this large and powerful butterfly.”

Conservationists believe changes to woodland management, such as the abandonment of coppicing, have contributed to the steep decline of the large, fast-flying butterfly over the past 50 years.

The National Trust has been given £100,000 by the People’s Postcode Lottery to improve 60 hectares (150 acres) of lowland heath and wood pasture at Heddon Valley in north Devon as a habitat for the butterfly.

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Britain's biggest butterfly threatened by rising seas

New charity warns Britain’s largest butterfly could be lost within four decades as rising seas turn its habitat into saltmarsh

Patrick Barkham

Fri 29 Jun 2018 12.27 BSTLast modified on Fri 29 Jun 201813.40 BST

Britain’s biggest butterfly, the swallowtail, could become extinct within four decades because of rising sea levels, a new charity has warned.

New inland habitat needs to be created for the swallowtail because rising seas are predicted to turn much of its current home, the Norfolk Broads, into saltmarshes later this century.

The British swallowtail caterpillar’s only food plant, milk parsley, cannot survive in saltwater, and so the plant and the butterfly will need to be translocated to the Cambridgeshire fens, according to butterfly experts.

“At least 90% of the current swallowtail breeding sites will become salt marsh with a sea level rise of 50cm,” said Mark Collins, chair of the Swallowtail and Birdwing Butterfly Trust, a new charity working to save the 500 swallowtail and birdwing butterfly species worldwide. “We could be looking at 30 or 40 years and these sites will be gone, given the rate of sea-level rise and also tidal surges and ‘salination events’, where saltwater comes rushing up the Broads’ rivers.”

Read on

Reality Check: Are butterflies getting rarer?

By Reality Check teamBBC News

30 June 2018

It's been claimed that butterfly populations in the UK are falling rapidly. Do the figures back this up?

Their names are as varied and colourful as their wings.

The Duke of Burgundy, the Lulworth skipper, the chalk hill blue, the painted lady and the small pearl-bordered fritillary are among the 59 species of butterfly regularly found in the UK.

But, adored as they are, it's often claimed that the UK's butterflies are in trouble. Climate change, habitat destruction and hunting/collecting have all been blamed.

The naturalist Chris Packham recently tweeted his concern.

“I’ve been in my garden in Hampshire for the last couple of days . Sunny , plenty of wildflowers . Not a single butterfly . Not one . Nothing . And in the woods a handful of Speckled Woods . I think we are at a point of absolute crisis in our countryside .”

The statistics support his observation.

Government figures suggest that, since 1976, "habitat specialist" butterflies - the ones that tend not to fly far from their favoured landscapes, such as heathland or chalkland - have declined by 77%.

"Wider countryside" species - the ones that are better able to move around and adapt to different environments - have declined by 46% over the same period.

"It's worrying," says Tom Brereton, head of monitoring for the charity Butterfly Conservation. "When I started doing this, the concern was mainly about habitat specialists, but now all types seem to be struggling. We don't fully understand why that's happening."

Read on 

Monarchs ride west coast winds: Proof of butterfly migration gathered

June 25, 2018, Washington State University

After five years and nearly 15,000 tagged butterflies, scientists now have proof that Monarch butterflies migrate from the Pacific Northwest to California in late summer and fall, a journey averaging nearly 500 miles.

Most of the tagging was done by citizen scientists and inmates from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The prisoners are carefully trained in raising, tagging, and releasing Monarchs.

The findings were recently published in the Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society. WSU entomology professor David James spearheaded the project, which took a massive amount of time and coordination to put together, ultimately involving hundreds of volunteers. The research was unfunded, making the volunteers indispensable.

Long distance travelers

"On average, these butterflies averaged almost 40 miles of travel each day," James said. "That's pretty remarkable for such a small creature."

Though scientists don't know exactly how the butterflies travel that far, they suspect the Monarchs may ride warm air currents called thermals a few thousand feet up in the air, then use the strong upper-air currents to navigate, James said.

The paper covered the initial five years of the project, from 2012 to 2016. Participants tagged and released 13,778 Monarchs that were raised in captivity and tagged 875 wild Monarchs. More than one-third of the raised Monarchs were reared by inmates at Walla Walla, James said.

Read more at:

Rapid evolution fails to save butterflies from extinction in face of human-induced change

Date:  May 9, 2018

Source:  University of Plymouth

The evolution of wild species, adapting them to human management practices, can cause localised extinctions when those practices rapidly change. And in a new study published in Nature, Professors Michael C. Singer and Camille Parmesan have used more than 30 years of research to fully document an example of this process.

A large, isolated population of a North American butterfly evolved complete dependence on an introduced European weed to the point where the continued existence of the butterfly depended on the plant's availability. The insects then became locally extinct when humans effectively eliminated that availability, confirming a prediction made by the same authors in a 1993 Nature paper.

Thus the advent of cattle ranching more than 100 years ago set an eco-evolutionary trap that the insects obligingly fell into, and the trap was sprung when humans suddenly removed the cattle, withdrawing their 'gift', and driving the butterflies to extinction.

European conservation biologists have long believed this to be the process underlying many local extinctions across Europe, and this study provides the first hard evidence of the process in action in real time. It also foreshadows an increasing importance of maintaining historical land use practices, including cattle ranching, as conservation measures in North America.

Continued  

Tweezers and talcum powder: butterfly wing transplants take flight in New Zealand

Insect lovers are going to extraordinary lengths to give injured butterflies an extra few weeks of life

Eleanor Ainge Roy in Dunedin

Tue 1 May 2018 03.51 BST Last modified on Tue 1 May 2018 06.17 BST

New Zealand’s love affair with the monarch butterfly has reached bizarre new heights, with some devotees performing wing transplants on the insects to give them a few extra weeks of life.

Although the butterflies are not classified as threatened or endangered, some lepidopterists have carried out the unusual surgery using techniques picked up from YouTube.

The operations involve removing the deformed or injured wings and repairing or fitting a new one from a dead monarch using tweezers, superglue and talcum powder.

On average monarchs live for between two to six weeks.

The operation is not painful for the butterfly, but experts and conservationists say the outcome for the animal is unknown, and efforts would be better directed towards cultivating flowers and plants that would attract and aid the wider population.

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Warming climate could see butterfly loved by Churchill return to UK

Former PM unsuccessfully tried to reintroduce black-veined white in 1940s, but conditions may now allow species to prosper

Patrick Barkham

Sat 7 Apr 2018 06.30 BST

He was the consummate politician who could bend nations to his will, but Winston Churchill was powerless when it came to butterflies.

The British prime minister hired the country’s leading lepidopterist and spent years attempting to reintroduce two extinct species into his back garden.

Despite his best efforts, and the release of hundreds of black-veined whites and swallowtails in the 1940s, his schemes to have rare butterflies feasting on “fountains of honey and water” at Chartwell in Kent were an ignominious failure.

Churchill may, however, simply have been seven decades ahead of his time: new research has revealed that climatic conditions may be suitable for the black-veined white to fly in Britain once again.

The species – which is still found across much of Europe – became extinct in Britain after a series of disastrously wet autumns in the early part of the 20th century. Now, with average temperatures rising, experts believe it could prosper here once again.

Two studies in northern France, which has a similar climate to southern England, have found that it would be easy to provide for the black-veined white’s needs by creating flowery field margins and allowing the growth of young scrub such as hawthorn and blackthorn.

Continued  

Rare butterfly found breeding in Scotland for first time in 130 years

Eggs laid by white-letter hairstreak found on elm trees in Berwickshire

Patrick Barkham

Thu 15 Feb 2018 07.01 GMTLast modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 07.03 GMT

The microscopic eggs of an endangered butterfly have been found in Scotland, suggesting the insect has returned to breed in the country for the first time in more than 130 years.

Lepidopterists discovered white-letter hairstreak eggs on wych elm trees at Lennel, Berwickshire, this month after an adult butterfly was spotted last summer 10 miles away – the first sighting in Scotland since 1884.

“Last year was an impossible find, but this year’s egg discovery is beyond anything we thought possible,” said Iain Cowe, butterfly recorder for the Borders, who found the adult butterfly last summer.

While most butterflies hibernate as caterpillars, the white-letter hairstreak spends nine months of the year as an egg, which is smaller than a grain of salt and stuck to slender branches of elm.

The eggs were detected by Jill Mills and Ken Haydock, volunteers for Butterfly Conservation who travelled from Bolton to scour trees in the Borders.

“We were searching the elm trees by the River Tweed at Lennel when Jill called me over,” said Haydock. “I could see by the look on her face that she had found something.

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This costume designer repaired a butterfly’s wing, then watched in delight as it flew away

By Allison Klein January 18

Romy McCloskey is a costume designer by training, with a specialty in intricate bead work that demands precision. She also raises and releases monarch butterflies at her Texas home.

It just so happened that these two skills intersected on a recent day when she actually performed surgery on one of her injured monarch’s wings, an operation that saved its life and allowed it to fly away to migrate.

“Hopefully he’s having a margarita down in Mexico with his buddies,” said McCloskey, 43, a mother of two boys.

The butterfly catastrophe-turned-victory tale began a few weeks ago when McCloskey was at her home in suburban Houston and looked over at her cocoons, only to see her house cat Floki swatting at them, thinking they were toys. Floki’s paw had knocked one down, fatally injuring it, and left another damaged.

“It had a crack in the cocoon,” McClosky said. “I thought, “please don’t let it die.”

A few days later, she watched as butterflies started to emerge, from the cracked cocoon and eight others. The one with the cracked cocoon came out with a mangled wing and was unable to fly.

Continued

Night-flyers or day-trippers? Study sheds light on when moths, butterflies are active

Date:  December 12, 2017

Source:  Florida Museum of Natural History

Summary:

Butterflies fly during the day while moths travel at night - or so you might think. In reality, their behavior is much more complicated. A new study offers the first comprehensive overview of the surprisingly complex question of when butterflies and moths are active.

Read on 

New butterfly species discovered in Russia with an unusual set of 46 chromosomes

Date:  November 27, 2017

Source:  Pensoft Publishers

Summary:

Finding a new species is a rare event in easy-to-see and well-studied organisms like butterflies, especially if they inhabit well-explored areas such as Europe. Researchers have now discovered the previously unknown South-Russian blue using an array of modern research techniques. Furthermore, the new species was found to possess 46 chromosomes, just like a human, whereas its closest relative has 68 chromosomes.

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To breed or not to breed? Migratory female butterflies face a monsoonal dilemma

Date: October 3, 2017

Source: National Centre for Biological Sciences

What do CPUs, stockbrokers, and butterflies have in common? They are good at investing their resources in the right place at the right time so as to maximize their returns! Trade-offs are a way of life for butterflies and other small insects that must budget their energy between numerous morphological features and activities during their short lifespans. Time, food, and space are always at a premium, and optimizing resource use is particularly important for migratory butterflies that must prepare for arduous journeys in uncertain environments. A new study by researchers at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR, Bangalore) reports on butterfly migrations in peninsular India and explores the effect of migration on resource investment strategies of migratory butterflies. It reveals that migration affects the morphology and physiological states of female butterflies much more prominently compared to that of males.

Read on