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<h1><b>Butterflies are early warning system for climate
change</b></h1> <br>
By Hanneke Brooymans, Edmonton Journal June 30, 2010<br>
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<a href="??.htm">
<img src="http://www.edmontonjournal.com/3217853.bin" width=600 height=333 alt="A butterfly at the
Devonian Gardens near Edmonton, Alberta, o"></a><br>
<i>A butterfly at the Devonian Gardens near Edmonton, Alberta, on
Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Photograph by: John Lucas,
edmontonjournal.com<br><br>
<br>
</i>EDMONTON - They may look like lightweights, but in a biological sense
butterflies are heavy hitters when it comes to protecting species
threatened by climate change.<br><br>
As the world warmed, a butterfly called Edith's checkerspot was the first
organism to show a documented range shift, said Camille Parmesan, an
associate professor of biology at the University of Texas at Austin, who
is in Edmonton for the sixth International Conference on the Biology of
Butterflies.<br><br>
Edith's checkerspot has been dying out in northern Mexico and doing well
in Canada, Parmesan said Tuesday during a break in the conference. It's
also dying out at lower elevations and flourishing in the Sierra Nevada's
highest elevations.<br><br>
Parmesan and some colleagues also did a study of 57 European species that
showed two-thirds were moving northward. Research shows many species move
northward because of changes in the growth pattern of plants the
butterfly relies on for food.<br><br>
"People think of changes in timing as not important, at least a lot
of the general public do -- who cares if a plant is flowering two weeks
earlier?" Parmesan asked. But work on the Edith's checkerspot showed
its host plant was drying up too quickly, making it inedible to the
larvae and causing local extinctions.<br><br>
As long as the host plant grows further north, where it's still cooler,
and the butterfly can make its way to those spots through connected
habitat patches, the butterfly could shift northward.<br><br>
Butterflies that already live at high altitudes or in northerly sites are
the most likely to be in serious trouble, Parmesan said.<br><br>
"What we're seeing at the highest elevations is the species with
nowhere to go are essentially evaporating off the tops of those mountains
and we're losing those species," said Jeremy Kerr, associate
professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, who has also studied
the insects.<br><br>
"Butterflies are this kind of canary in the coal mine that may be
useful guides for what other species will eventually do and the pressures
that other species, or species groups, may face," Kerr
said.<br><br>
"Whether those species respond the same way or not, the pressures
that those species are confronted with may be comparable."<br><br>
Humans have been paying close attention to butterflies for centuries.
Data sets on butterflies go back to 1760 in the United Kingdom, Sweden
and Finland, Parmesan said.<br><br>
In Canada, they go back to the 1860s, said Kerr.<br><br>
Kerr has used this data and models to show that butterflies have
responded as expected to the changing climate and landscape. Generalist
species, such as the common roadside butterflies that everybody sees, are
expanding their ranges and becoming more common, he said.<br><br>
"And they are doing so essentially at the expense of the specialist
species, the things that really distinguish the regions of Canada from
one another biologically, the species that are relatively uncommon and
specialize on narrower sets of floral hosts. These species are slowly
fading away from our landscapes.<br><br>
"If you look at the list of observations of endangered butterflies,
every single observation of an endangered butterfly species in this
country -- every single one, 100 per cent of them -- are in exactly the
areas of southern Canada that these models predict they should be found
within, where human activities have their deepest
footprints."<br><br>
What this means is that we can't rely on protected parks alone to
conserve biological diversity, Kerr said. "They are not like zoos.
You can't just keep species intact in those places. The terrestrial area
of this country is about 10 million square kilometres. Something less
than 10 per cent of that land mass is in a park. Almost all of those
parks are in places where almost no species exist. So we protect ice and
snow remarkably well. And we protect the places where biological
diversity is concentrated remarkably poorly."<br><br>
Kerr said parks actually protect species worse than randomly selected
areas in some places. "So parks are not the answer. What we need to
do is change the way we use landscapes."<br><br>
Simply leaving unused margins or fields in agricultural areas unmowed
would go a long way to protecting biodiversity, he said. "You don't
have to do a lot of restoration. You don't have to do a lot of
conservation to maintain vital habitat in these
landscapes."<br><br>
Granted, he is not saying these spots would conserve grizzly bears. But
allowing native prairies to take root in the margins would be good for
lots of birds, all kinds of insects, including pollinators, and
wildflowers.<br><br>
"These are the species that are in many instances the keys to
conserving ecosystem function."<br><br>
We also need to anticipate the changes climate change will bring, he
said.<br><br>
"The trick here in terms of climate change is not to think about
where we are today but to think about where the puck is going. And the
puck is going to be moving in roughly a northern direction here. We need
to be thinking about conserving areas that are the kind of frontiers for
the near future."<br><br>
Parmesan agreed. "Canada will become increasingly important for
preserving North American biodiversity because a lot of the U.S. species
that are even common species, as they're moving up into Canada, they're
dying out in the U.S.A.," she said.<br><br>
"And so we need to be thinking more continental-scale in terms of
conservation, not just country-scale. In other words, the U.S. should be
partnering with Canada to try to preserve species that are moving into
Canada."<br><br>
<a href="mailto:">hbrooymans@thejournal.canwest.com</a><br><br>
<b>HOW TO HELP<br><br>
</b>- -Butterfly enthusiasts can add their sightings from throughout the
country to the website of the Canadian butterfly monitoring project. The
main goal of the project is to figure out if species are shifting their
home ranges because of land-use changes and climate change. The second
goal is to predict future impacts of these changes on Canadian
butterflies.<br><br>
- -To visit the site or contribute your observations go to
<a href="http://www.macroecology.ca/butterflies/">
www.macroecology.ca/butterflies/</a><br>
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal<br>
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*************************<br>
Scott Hoffman Black<br>
Ecologist/Entomologist<br>
Executive Director<br>
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation<br>
4828 SE Hawthorne <br>
Portland, OR 97215 <br>
Direct line (503) 449-3792<br>
sblack@xerces.org<br><br>
<i>The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit organization that
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their
habitat. <br>
</i> <br>
To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work, <br>
please visit
<a href="http://www.xerces.org/">www.xerces.org</a>.<br><br>
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