Saturday, August 10, 2013

Cascades Butterfly Project


The Cascades Butterfly Project aims to document butterfly populations in a number of areas in Washington State and BC.  As climate change is a sure-fire way to win grant money, of course there is a global warming angle to the study.

Some of the hypotheses are laughable: "if butterflies fly to higher elevations faster than their host plants can migrate, will they be able to survive?"  It is amusing to imagine that a plant might lose the race up or down a mountainside as temperatures vary over decades and centuries, or that a butterfly might not be able to visit an area a few hundred vertical feet away.

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