Coimbatore: The members of the Tamil Nadu Butterfly Society, who undertook a butterfly walk at Kovai Coutrallam last week, spotted 102 species in a day.

ITANAGAR: Researchers have discovered a new species of moth from the Talle Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh.

Effective habitat restoration requires an understanding of species habitat preferences and the associated mechanisms driving those preferences. We examined the patterns and causes of oviposition preference in the monarch butterfly, a rapidly declining species, in southwestern Ontario at both landscape and milkweed patch spatial scales. Additionally, we measured the abundance of invertebrate predators, parasitoids and parasites across these same spatial scales.

Research of the past decades has shown that biodiversity promotes ecosystem functions including primary productivity. However, most studies focused on experimental communities at small spatial scales, and little is known about how these findings scale to nonexperimental, real-world ecosystems at large spatial scales, despite these systems providing essential ecosystem services to humans.

A severe late spring storm in central Mexico in March 2016 that struck the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve was unique because it was accompanied by high-velocity winds that eliminated the normal thermal protection provided by the Oyamel fir forest. Temperatures throughout the forest merged with the colder open-area ambient temperatures. The storm was in effect a rain and snow storm sandwiched within a powerful and sustained wind storm, followed by lethal freezing that killed 31–38% of the butterflies in the Sierra Chincua and Cerro Pelón overwintering colonies.

Scotland has a new species of butterfly: the elusive and endangered white-letter hairstreak has been discovered in a field in Berwickshire, 100 metres from the English border.

There is growing recognition as to the importance of extreme climatic events (ECEs) in determining changes in species populations. In fact, it is often the extent of climate variability that determines a population's ability to persist at a given site. This study examined the impact of ECEs on the resident UK butterfly species (n = 41) over a 37-year period. The study investigated the sensitivity of butterflies to four extremes (drought, extreme precipitation, extreme heat and extreme cold), identified at the site level, across each species' life stages.

TNBS conducted the survey in the reserve forest and open areas

The small tortoiseshell was once a common garden butterfly but has declined by 73% since scientific monitoring began in the 1970s.

While international efforts are under way to help keep dwindling populations of monarch butterflies from disappearing, scientists are raising concerns about how severe weather and a loss of forest

Pages