https://www.ecowatch.com/blue-butterfly-extinction-conservation-uk.html
"Butterflies overall are struggling in the UK, but one particularly endangered
species is thriving.
After being driven to extinction in the UK in 1979, the large blue butterfly
had its best year in 2022 since record keeping began 150 years ago, the Royal
Entomological Society announced Wednesday. The success is thanks to
reintroduction efforts that began in 1983.
“I didn’t have a grey hair on my head when I started,” the society’s David
Simcox, who helped lead the reintroduction efforts, told BBC News. “Now it’s
all grey.”
The large blue butterfly was rendered extinct in the first place in part
because of its unusual lifecycle, the Royal Entomological Society explained. It
spends the first three weeks of its life gobbling up wild marjoram or thyme
flowers before doing something truly strange. It disguises itself as a red ant
grub by mimicking the other insect’s sounds and smells. Once the parent ant
takes it into the nest, it eats the real grubs for 10 months before forming a
cocoon and emerging as a butterfly. However, the large blue caterpillar can
only trick one particular species of red ant,
Myrmica sabuleti, which needs a
certain amount of heat to thrive. But changes in the way grazing was managed in
the UK meant that wildflowers in meadows grew too tall and created too much
shade for that particular species of red ant, which is why the large blue
butterfly died out.
Discovering the exact species of red ant the butterfly needed to trick enabled
scientists to reintroduce the butterfly by recreating the ant’s preferred
habitat through controlled grazing. Simcox headed the initial reintroduction
efforts alongside University of Oxford Emeritus Professor of Ecology Jeremy
Thomas, who was the one who discovered what the species needed to thrive. They
first reintroduced the butterflies in Devon using individuals from Sweden.
Next, the large blues were reintroduced to the Somerset Wildlife Trust’s Green
Down in 1992 and the Cotswolds in 2010. Recently, conservationists have created
or restored 12 new sites for the species in Southwest England that already
support as much as one third of the butterfly’s UK population. As of 2022, the
species is breeding in greater numbers and in more locations than any point in
the last 150 years."
Via
Future Crunch Sep 23, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-aids-ocean-indonesia-clean-air-spain/>
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
