New butterfly arriving in Carson Valley

Carson Valley residents may see some different butterflies this spring, as populations move to higher elevations in the Sierra.

Butterfly populations in California are declining and, in some cases, moving to higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada due to climate change and loss of habitat, according to a study authored by biologist Matthew Forister, a University of Nevada, Reno, assistant professor in the College of Science.

"Caterpillars are important herbivores as well as a food source for small mammals and birds," Forister said. "They play a significant role in an ecosystem. Butterflies are used as indicators of the health of the environment worldwide. What's happening here is a globally recognized pattern, though this study is unique in representing North America."

The study, was published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," and is based on 35 years of data collected by Arthur Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, and analyzed by a team headed by Forister, who was also a former doctoral student in Shapiro's lab.

Forister has been analyzing the data for more than five years. For the data on butterflies to be meaningful, decades of consistent sampling is required with long-term data sets, he said.

The study, "Compounded effects of climate change and habitat alteration shift patterns of butterfly diversity," was funded by the National Science Foundation, and may be found at www.pnas.org

Additional authors are James Thorne, Joshua O'Brien and David Waetjen at the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy; Andrew McCall at Denison University in Ohio; and Nathan Sanders and James Fordyce at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Forister's Great Basin Bug Lab Web site can be found by clicking here and his department homepage is at http://www.unr.edu/biology/forister.htm. Shapiro's online database can be found at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu.