By Rodrigo Solis On June 19, 2015, five intrepid lepidopterists – Jacques Larrivée, Chris Schmidt, Rick Cavasin, Peter Hall and Max Larrivée – set out to explore the east side of James Bay in Quebec and identify the bogs to be monitored along a 10 degree latitudinal transect. Fast-forward to 2018 and this time, as a […]
Opportunistic data collection programs like e-Butterfly allow volunteers to report species observations from anywhere, and can quickly assemble large volumes of both historic and current data. But how valuable is the data? A new peer-reviewed study by researchers at the University of Ottawa used eButterfly data and a comparable dataset of professionally collected observations across Canada to […]
From July 28 to August 5, butterfly watchers across North America are invited to take part in the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz to help provide a valuable snapshot of Monarch population status across their late summer range. Participation is simple: find a milkweed patch and look for Monarchs, counting the number of stems you examined […]
Although they measure barely an inch across, the azures (in the genus Celastrina) cause a mile of consternation among lepidopterists. Even as these butterflies present sparks of blue, their taxonomy remains cloudy and controversial. I won’t resolve it for you here. Instead, I’ll tell you some of what we know or suspect about these blues, […]
Each year eButterfly keeps growing thanks to the dedication of many butterfly watchers and professional lepidopterists. In 2017 alone, 475 species were reported to eButterfly represented by nearly 12,000 checklists comprising almost 50,000 butterfly records and over 21,000 photographs. We now have recorded 741 butterfly species at over 35,000 locations across North America by nearly […]
From a graduate school student’s lofty dream to a full-fledged citizen science program, eButterfly celebrates its 6th year with a new publication in a special issue of the journal Insects on butterfly conservation. The article – eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation – highlights our accomplishments and outlines the bright future of […]
In the northern part of North America, most butterfliers in the fall hang up their binoculars and cameras and head into semi-hibernation. However, more than a few simply head south in November to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. I have joined them from Ontario in the past two years and have been astounded […]
On June 19, 2015, five intrepid lepidopterists – Jacques Larivée, Chris Schmidt, Rick Cavasin, Peter Hall and Max Larrivée – set out to explore the east side of James Bay in Quebec. headed north from Ottawa, we travelled up the James Bay Highway, the northernmost paved road in eastern North America culminating at nearly 54 […]
I have the great fortune of living in a mature hardwood forests on a two acre lot in Rigaud, Québec, Canada. This has allowed me to witness butterfly and moth behaviour and phenological events in ways I had never experienced in the past. This morning, similarly to last July, the first thing I saw when I […]
This November’s eButterflyer of the month is Daniel Jones from Texas. Dan joined eButterfly last spring and has been an extremely productive eButterfly user and our top Texas contributor ever since! He is currently ranked second for the number of species recorded in 2014 in our top 100 with 132 species from 47 checklists contributed […]