#satyrini

Western brassy ringlet (Erebia cassioides arvernensis)

Butterfly on a bomb range: Endangered Species Act at work

There, as a 400-pound explosive resounds in the distance, a tiny St. Francis Satyr butterfly flits among the splotchy leaves, ready to lay as many as 100 eggs. At one point, this brown and frankly dull-looking butterfly could be found in only one place on Earth: Fort Bragg’s artillery range.

Now, thanks in great measure to the 46-year-old federal act, they are found in eight more places — though all of them are on other parts of the Army base. And if all goes well, biologists will have just seeded habitat No. 10.

One of Earth’s rarest butterfly species, there are maybe 3,000 St. Francis Satyrs. There are never going to be enough of them to get off the endangered list, but they’re not about to go extinct either. They are permanent patients of the bureaucratic conservation hospital ward.

In some ways, the tiny butterfly is an ideal example of the more than 1,600 U.S. species that have been protected by the Endangered Species Act. Alive, but not exactly doing that well.

To some experts, just having these creatures around means the 46-year-old law has done its job. More than 99.2% of the species protected by the act survive, The Associated Press has found. Only 11 species were declared extinct, and experts say all but a couple of them had already pretty much died out when they were listed.

On the other hand, only 39 U.S. species — about 2% of the overall number— have made it off the endangered list because of recovery, including such well-known successes as bald eagles, peregrine falcons and American alligators.

Most of the species on the endangered list are getting worse. And only 8% are getting better, according to a 2016 study by Jake Li, director for biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center in Washington.

New Butterfly Discovered in Alaska for First Time in 28 Years

A scientist organizing butterfly specimens in a museum collection made a startling discovery: What people had thought was a variant of a common species is actually a totally new organism, and one with an interesting evolutionary history to boot. And what's more, the new species may be the only type of butterfly endemic to Alaska, meaning it is found there but nowhere else.

A group of eight scientists from three countries has named the new insect the Tanana Arctic, or Oeneis tanana. It's the first new butterfly species described from Alaska in 28 years, and the research is now published in the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera.

"To me it was surprising that no one had noticed this before," says Andrew Warren, a study author and lepidopterist (or butterfly expert) at the University of Florida in Gainesville....

The Tanana Arctic lives in the spruce and aspen forests of the Tanana-Yukon River Basin in central Alaska's interior. Like many other cold-weather butterflies, the adults are short lived, emerging in late May and dying off by July. The larvae take two years to mature and subsist on sedges and grasses, while the adults sip nectar.

Little is known about the ecological importance of the species. It's evolutionary history is likely to prove interesting, however. The species is probably one of a handful of butterflies that are known to have arisen through hybridization of two other species in the recent past, says Warren. That process is known to occur commonly in plants, but in butterflies scientists have only recently realized the possibility.

Straight-banded Tree Brown (Lethe verma cintamani Fruhstorfer)

(by Shelley Huang)