Do you want to learn about the latest features released on eButterfly such as computer image recognition, a discussion forum, eBLabs, and more? Or maybe you’d like to learn how to use eButterfly for its full potential? If so, don’t miss our upcoming webinar on Thursday, July 21st, at 4 PM (EST) with Rodrigo Solis Sosa, our Human Network and Data Coordinator. Pre-register here: https://bit.ly/3IxTUSj
The presence of monarch butterflies in Mexico’s forests this past winter was 35% greater than the previous year, according to the most recent survey led by WWF Mexico. This increase marks a sign of recovery—albeit a fragile one—and gives some reason for hope against a backdrop of several decades of decline for the iconic species. According to the survey, Forest Area Occupied by the Colonies of Monarch Butterflies in Mexico During the 2021-2022 Overwintering Season, the species’ presence in and around Mexico’s famed Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve grew from 5.19 acres in December 2020 to 7.02 acres in December 2021.
It was a cloudless midsummer day in 2019 when Siaja Parceaud-May noticed a Booth’s sulphur butterfly that had some “noticeable differences.” She was about an hour north of her home community of Kuujjuaq in Quebec’s Nunavik region with a team of entomologists and researchers from the Montreal Insectarium, learning how to identify and collect butterflies. Along a sandy, cleared ridge toward Ungava Bay, she spotted the peculiar critter that would be sent to Montreal for further analysis. Her hunch turned out to be right. More than a year later, insectarium director Maxim Larrivée wrote to her — confirming that she had discovered a new subspecies of Colias tyche. To her surprise, it would be named in her honour: Colias tyche siaja.
We are pleased to share a new iBook, “Wings that Make Waves”. Biological illustrator Kim Moss teamed up with Ecologist Dr. Diane Debinski and Ph.D. student Simone Durney to create this interactive book, which is focused on using butterflies as bioindicators. The authors wanted to make the story of their research more accessible to the general public, park visitors, and K-12 teachers. Read more about this project and where to download a free copy of this amazing book.
Peter Hall, scientific advisor for eButterfly, recently traveled to Panama. Read about his adventure and the amazing butterfly observations he shared with eButterfly. “We ended up staying in three very different facilities belonging to the Canopy Family – the Canopy Camp in the Darien jungle to the east, the Canopy Lodge in the cloud forests to the west and the Canopy Tower in the lowland Canal Zone in the centre. Our main targets were the immense diversity of butterflies and birds found in this small country. All the facilities also had expert local guides who knew where to go and how to identify this diversity. By the end of our visit, our butterfly checklist stood at 225 species and bird list at 232. And that’s not even to mention the twenty-plus mammal species and countless other smaller life forms.”
With checklists from the tropics of Panama to the islands of Hawaii and as far north as Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada, 2021 was an amazing year for eButterfly. There’s no doubt that 2021 was once again a challenging year, leading more people to nature to find comfort, hope, and a sense of connection with others. Thank you for joining us!
Andrew Hogan, avid butterflier and long-term eButterfly user, shares with us his findings from Tohono Chul Park in Arizona where he has run a long-standing weekly butterfly count since 2014. Learn about some of his findings and perhaps become inspired to start a weekly count near you!
Read our latest newsletter and learn about: Big Data for Science and Conservation, New Tool for Creating Your Own Projects, eButterfly Taxonomy Updated, Wanted: Your Historic Data, Computer Vision: Keeping an Eye on eButterfly, Create Your New User Profile, eButterfly Tech Team Makes Us Shine, and Getting Started with eButterfly: Help, Tutorials, and More.
eButterfly, in partnership with the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), has created eButterflAI, an advanced image recognition algorithm that has learned to recognize the genus and species for most North American butterflies based on their location and image. The tool will soon be coming to eButterfly.org for everyone to use. Learn more…
Butterfly walks are not only a relaxing activity, but also an invaluable source of data for science. Join Dr. Federico Riva as he discusses the importance of the checklists recorded in eButterfly for his work: (i) the use of butterfly checklists to understand population changes and inform conservation practices; (ii) the importance of “imperfect detection” – our inability to see all butterflies when we are looking for them – and how we can maximize the number of butterflies that we see at a site; (iii) his current work with eButterfly, that leverages thousands of observations from community scientists to help understand regions of conservation priority across North America.
