Tag Archives: evolution

Welcome to another Week on Sunday!

♦  The first half of yesterday was spent at City Centre, Edmonton, recording and photographing Chinese New Year’s celebrations. However  after an excellent free lunch at the Famous Wok, I stepped out, made my way to the LRT and then sped over to spend an afternoon at the U of A’s Earth Sciences Building. I was attending the launch of a new citizen-science program by the Alberta Lepidopterists’ Guild. AltaLeps  has initiated a new citizen-science project to create a butterfly atlas for Alberta. This will be a digital continuation of the original atlas, Alberta Butterflies (1995), which was co-authored and ‘fathered’ by Dr.Charles Bird. In  this program, John Acorn gathered a select group of speakers to tell us more about why a new atlas is needed and how this citizen-science project can benefit scientific research.

Dr. Felix Sperling, Dr. Maxim Larrivee, Dr. Charles Bird, Dr. Greg Breed, Dr. Katy Prudic and John Acorn

John Acorn introduced the meeting by telling us why an online butterfly atlas is an important project to help link scientists and butterfly enthusiasts. I particularly appreciated  John emphasizing the social aspects of butterfly watching and how data collected by butterfly enthusiasts could,  in the future, be used in ways that have not been thought of yet.

Max Larrivée, who is one of the originators of eButterfly Canada, talked about his experiences with eButterfly and how the data collected has already helped his own research, showing how climate change is pushing the range of butterflies northward. He stressed how important it was that all contributors have access to all the data that is collected.

Katy Prudic, from the University of Oregon spoke about her own research in: “Continental Co-Evolution: Using eButterfly to understand the geographic mosaic of plant-insect interactions.” Katy has been involved establishing  eButterfly in the USA.

Greg Breed, a Banting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, spoke on his work in Massachusetts, where he has be using multiple sources of observational data (including citizen science based data) to study changes in butterfly ranges. He particularly noted that he could not have done his research without the help of archived citizen-enthusiast observations.

Charles Bird talked about how we should not lose the information collected in the pre-digital era, where a lot of data exists in private collections. He noted that eButterfly now has the ability to upload correctly formatted data in bulk. With Max Larrivée’s help, the data of over 500 of his  butterfly observations had just been uploaded to the eButterfly.ca site!

The session was completed with Felix Sperling speaking on how data has been collected since the publication of Alberta Butterflies. He mentioned the annual butterfly walks initiated by the Xerces Society  in the 1990′s, and how similar butterfly counts became a trend in Alberta under the leadership of Barbara and Jim Beck. He also pointed out how some data collected by members of the Alberta Lepidopterists Guild has already been available online through the virtual E.H. Strickland Entomology Museum, largely thanks to the work of Gary Anweiler, a moth enthusiast and founding member of the Alberta Lepidopterists Guild. Felix noted how important it is that all the various types of data should find their way into the eButterfly/Alberta Butterfly Atlas.

It was an interesting session, that gives a new sense of purpose for Alberta butterfly watchers, photographers and naturalists, knowing that their observations have the potential to influence science for many years to come. I look forward to learning more about the progress of the Alberta Butterfly Atlas and, most of all, being able to add data and explore the information that has been collected.

♦ From butterflies to lice: a video on the co-evolution of birds and bird lice. Illinois Natural History Survey ornithologist Kevin Johnson:

♦ And to close…

What can amateurs contribute to the science of entomology? Read this BBC article on The bug-hunters discovering new species in their spare time,

Until next week…