|
News (Archive) | June 2005
Butterflies & moths on the WWW | Headlines
Wing your way to butterfly count — Louisville Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, USA — 30 June 2005 If you’ve missed seeing Charles Covell Jr., the Kentucky butterfly expert who flew off to a new job in Florida last year, you can catch him this weekend... Count your butterflies — Los Alamos Monitor, Los Alamos, NM, USA — 23 June 2005 The 13th annual Los Alamos Butterfly Count will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday at Burnt Mesa on State Road 4. The count will continue for approximately 1.5 hours at Burnt Mesa, then move to Canon de Valle on State Road 501 (West Jemez Road)... New species of butterfly found in NegOcc — Sun Star, Philippines — 22 June 2005 The British-led expedition to the 1,000-hectare Upper Calibang-Imbang tributary headwaters reported that they have discovered a new species of butterfly... Butterfly bluffs with eye spots — Monsters and Critics.com, Glasgow, UK — 16 June 2005 Stockholm, Sweden (UPI) — Swedish scientists say butterflies defend themselves against predators through eyespots on their wings, bluffing birds into thinking they are larger animals... 177 Species of Butterflies Found in Cuba — Cuban News Agency, Cuba — 15 June 2005 Although only 18 are exclusive to Cuba, 177 species of butterflies can be found on the island... Moths could target cocaine output — CNN International, USA — 10 June 2005 Bogota, Colombia — Thousands of hungry moths may hold the key to eradicating cocaine production, Colombian scientists have said, but critics say the idea could open the way for... Butterflies return on a flying visit — Scotsman, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK — 8 June 2005 Rare butterflies never seen before in the Lothians are becoming a common sight as more colourful varieties head north to escape global warming... Butterflies fly freely at Cattus Island — Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, NJ, USA — 4 June 2005 Spring azure, a delicate tiny blue creature, was the first butterfly to be spotted this year at Cattus Island County Park... Just printed Proceedings: Biological Sciences 272 (1569) Prey survival by predator intimidation: an experimental study of peacock butterfly defence against blue tits — Long-lived butterflies that hibernate as adults are expected to have well-developed antipredation devices as a result of their long exposure to natural enemies. The peacock butterfly, Inachis io, for instance, is a cryptic leaf mimic when resting, but shifts to active defence when disturbed, performing a repeated sequence of movements exposing major eyespots on the wings accompanied by a hissing noise. We studied the effect of visual and auditory defence by staging experiments in which wild-caught blue tits, Parus caeruleus, were presented with one of six kinds of experimentally manipulated living peacock butterflies as follows: butterflies with eyespots painted over and their controls (painted on another part of the wing), butterflies with their sound production aborted (small part of wings removed) and their controls, and butterflies with eyespots painted over and sound production aborted and their controls. The results showed that eyespots alone, or in combination with sound, constituted an effective defence; only 1 out of 34 butterflies with intact eyespots was killed, whereas 13 out of 20 butterflies without eyespots were killed. The killed peacocks were eaten, indicating that they are not distasteful. Hence, intimidation by bluffing can be an efficient means of defence for an edible prey. — Reference: A. Vallin, S. Jakobsson, J. Lind, C. Wiklund (2005): Prey survival by predator intimidation: an experimental study of peacock butterfly defence against blue tits. — Proceedings: Biological Sciences 272 (1569) (22 Jun 2005): 1203—1207. Does habitat fragmentation affect temperature-related life-history traits? A laboratory test with a woodland butterfly — Habitat fragmentation may change local climatic conditions leading to altered selection regimes for life-history traits in small ectotherms, including several insects. We investigated temperature-related performance in terms of fitness among populations of the woodland butterfly Pararge aegeria (L.) originating from populations of a closed, continuous woodland landscape versus populations of an open, highly fragmented agricultural landscape in central Belgium. Female fecundity and longevity were evaluated in a temperature-gradient experiment. As predicted, females of woodland landscape origin reached higher maximum daily fecundity and lifetime number of eggs than did agricultural landscape females at low ambient temperatures, but this reversed at high ambient temperature. Egg weight decreased with temperature, and eggs of woodland butterflies were smaller. Contrary to what is generally assumed, remaining thorax mass was a better predictor of lifetime reproductive output than was abdomen mass. Since we used the F2 generation from wild-caught females reared under common garden conditions, the observed effects are likely to rely on intrinsic, heritable variation. Our results suggest that differential selection regimes associated with different landscapes intervene by intraspecific variation in the response of a butterfly to variation in ambient temperature, and may thus be helpful when making predictions of future impacts on how wild populations respond to environmental conditions under a global change scenario, with increasing temperatures and fragmented landscapes. — Reference: B. Karlsson and H. Van Dyck (2005): Does habitat fragmentation affect temperature-related life-history traits? A laboratory test with a woodland butterfly. — Proceedings: Biological Sciences 272 (1569) (22 Jun 2005): 1257—1263. |
