eButterfly program turns insect lovers into ‘citizen scientists’ | Toronto Star
Scientists
seek public's help in creating a vast butterfly database to track the
impact of climate change and evolving ecosystems on the insects.
eButterfly program turns insect lovers into ‘citizen scientists’
Scientists seek public's help in
creating a vast butterfly database to track the impact of climate change
and evolving ecosystems on the insects.
Oregon State University
/
Oregon State University's Katy Prudic, director of the project in
the U.S., says there's "something magical" about butterflies. "They’re a
beautiful organism."
An interest in nature? Check.
Computer? Check.
A giant swallowtail or some other winged wonder fluttering around your backyard? Check.
Then welcome to the virtual world of http://ebutterfly.ca/#&panel1-1 , where everyone is invited to be a citizen scientist this summer.
All it takes is a keen
eye and a few mouse clicks to contribute to a much greater
understanding of global climate change and evolving ecosystems, whether
you’re a youngster entranced by the bright colours floating and dancing
on the breeze or a seasoned lepidopterist who can’t wait to see what
visitors the warm weather brings to the garden.
“The rate at which animals like butterflies are responding to climate change is faster than we thought.”
Jeremy Kerr
biology professor
The website
e-butterfly.org was hatched at the University of Ottawa by postdoctoral
fellow Maxim Larrivée, working in the lab of biology professor Jeremy
Kerr. The idea is to chart the location of butterflies as a means of
understanding how certain factors, such as urban sprawl, population
growth, changing land use and climate, impact the sensitive insects. It
further helps understand how the world is changing.
To create a vast
database from a vast continent, the biologists are deploying a veritable
army of volunteer contributors to observe the insects in the wild and
post their findings and photos on the web.
The site — akin to an
online butterfly collection — rolled out nationally about a year ago and
the project has just been relaunched in collaboration with Oregon State
University to cover the entire continent.
“Habitats are
disappearing. Cities are getting bigger. Places where there used to be a
forest or a meadow are disappearing at a really fast rate,” said
Larrivée, who is now the head of research and collections at Montreal’s Insectarium.
“When you couple that
with the way the climate is behaving . . . people feel the need, and
they have these opportunities now as citizen scientists, to contribute.”
He calls them “sentinels of biodiversity.”
The
response has been impressive. More than 1,400 users have submitted
35,000 reports on more than 400 species. Larrivée says there are 310
species of butterflies found in Canada.
“We
thought we’d have a few people in the suburbs of Ottawa and maybe one
Toronto diehard digging in, but it turns out there really are a lot of
people out there who are in the lepidoptera community,” said Kerr.
“They really want to work on butterflies. They’re just looking for a way to be useful with their years of observations.”
Plus, it’s fun and fascinating.
“There’s something
magical about butterflies,” said Katy Prudic, a research scientist at
Oregon State University and director of the project in the U.S.
“They don’t seem like
they should be that graceful and that elegant. And there’s the whole
metamorphosis and becoming something new. They’re a beautiful organism.
And they’re something you can handle. You can go out and touch a
butterfly. How many times have you picked up a caterpillar just to look
at it? That’s something that’s unusual as compared to birds or
rhinoceroses or pandas. You can’t keep a panda in a glass jar.”
So, what has been learned from the contributions of the butterfly enthusiasts fanned out across North America?
“The rate at which
animals like butterflies are responding to climate change is faster than
we thought,” said Kerr. “These animals really are adaptable and they’re
moving at an incredible rate in some parts of the country.”
Examples of that will
be visible to even casual observers in Toronto this summer. Those giant
swallowtails — the largest butterfly in Canada; a mostly black and
yellow beauty about the size of a medium-sized hand — have become
commonplace around the city, whereas they used to be found only in the
warmer areas further south in the province.
And there are
noticeably fewer monarch butterflies. Once ubiquitous, their population
has shrunk to the point that the species is now listed as near-threatened by the World Wildlife Fund and of special concern by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Species in Canada.
Monarchs, said Kerr, have been hit by both climate change and the increased use of herbicides.
Mexico’s Oyamel
forest, where the migrating monarchs overwinter, has become much wetter
due to changing climate and the deforestation of trees that previously
provided cover. That sogginess is bad for butterflies. Monarchs also
rely on milkweed as a host plant for their eggs and food for their
caterpillars, but that plant is being wiped out over large areas.
“So we’re killing off
its host plant in the summer and climate change is hitting it during the
winter,” said Kerr. “Monarchs live on a noxious weed. They should be as
common as dirt but they’re not.”
Prudic says there will
be both winners and losers in the butterfly world as the climate
changes. A winner is the bog copper, a small grey-brown butterfly (the
males’ wings have a purple sheen) that relies on the cranberry bush as
its host plant. It has been rapidly moving north.
“Its host plant has
always been in the north parts of Canada but it’s limited by winter
temperatures and survival. If it’s too cold in February, for example,
the pupae die. Now that the average lows are getting higher, it seems to
be moving north at a pretty good clip,” she said.
Kerr said the species
is moving north at about 15 to 20 kilometres a year along the eastern
shores of James and Hudson Bays and bog coppers are now even beyond the
range of where contributors to eButterfly can easily help chart their
progress.
“They’re basically on a
freight train to the North Pole,” Kerr said. “They’re now beyond where
you can get to in a vehicle and we don’t know where their northern range
limits are any more. It’s just crazy.”
While many adults have
memories of chasing butterflies around the backyard as kids, the
organizers of eButterfly hope the current generation of youngsters view
monitoring them as a summer activity.
“Kids love exploring
the world around them and butterflies are a great way to help them
understand their attachment to their surrounding world,” said Kerr.
“It’s something they seem to love to do. I’ve never had much trouble
convincing kids that butterflies were cool to look at.”
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