Butterflies are the Canaries in the Coal Mine

According to Camille Parmesan, an associate professor of biology at the University of Texas at Austin, a butterfly called Edith’s checkerspot was the first organism to show a documented range shift due to climate change.

At the recent International Conference on the Biology of Butterflies, Camille Parmesan said the Edith’s checkerspot has been dying out in northern Mexico but doing well in Canada.

Camille Parmesan and some colleagues also studied 57 European butterfly species and two-thirds were shown to be moving northward.  Research shows many species move northward because of changes in the growth pattern of plants butterflies rely on for food.  Work on the Edith’s checkerspot showed its host plant was drying up too quickly, making it inedible to the larvae and causing local extinctions.