Research at Plantations

As spring tiptoes in, my mind fills with the memory of spring woods carpeted with the delicate flowers of trillium and the quiet flutter of the wings of wood whites. The butterfly season is just beginning again, first with the emergence of overwintering and migrating butterflies like mourning cloaks and painted ladies, and later with vast numbers of other fascinating butterflies. It has been a year now since I surveyed the butterflies of McLean Bog (a Lloyd Preserve) as a Tang intern with Cornell Plantations' natural areas.

The McLean preserve has been an important area for butterfly watchers for almost a century. In the 1920s William T.M. Forbes (an entomology professor at Cornell) found 41 species of butterflies there. I and Robert Dirig, assistant curator of the Bailey Hortorium Herbarium, recently re-surveyed the area. Our research during the 1997 season revealed a total of 51 butterfly species, not all of which corresponded to those found historically.

Sadly, some butterfly species, like the Arctic skipper and pepper and salt skipper, have not been seen for many years. Other losses include the brown elfin, a small butterfly that feeds on blueberry plants, and the American copper which used to feed on the sheep sorrel along the right of way. However, in this seven-decade interim, although McLean witnessed the disappearance of nine species, it has also witnessed the exciting discovery of 19 others. So the gains do exceed the losses!

Some species, including the wood white, disappeared temporarily between the 1950s and 1970s but then rebounded. Its disappearance may have been caused by aerial spraying of insecticides for gypsy moth control.

New species found since the 1920s include the orange sulfur, with its brilliant patches of orange, which was first seen in the area around 1930. The European skipper, an exotic species that has been spreading across the Eastern states, appeared during the 1970s at McLean. New discoveries for 1997 included the ringlet, a little peach colored butterfly with fairylike markings; and the broad winged skipper, which features brilliant flashes of orange on its hind wings and flits from milkweed to milkweed in the sunny swamps. In addition, the golden Delaware skipper was found for the first time at McLean, basking in the large fen. A new butterfly checklist which includes all butterfly species found at McLean Bog is now available from Plantations gift shop.

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Ditulis oleh William Perkasa pada tanggal Friday, March 28, 2008