Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site
Hesperia lindseyi
This website describes over 34 years of data collected by Dr. Arthur Shapiro, professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, in his continuing effort to regularly monitor butterfly population trends on a transect across central California. Ranging from the Sacramento River delta, through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains, to the high desert of the western Great Basin, fixed routes at ten sites have been surveyed at approximately two-week intervals since as early as 1972. The sites represent the great biological, geological, and climatological diversity of central California.
As of the end of 2006, Dr. Shapiro has logged 5476 site-visits and tallied approximately 83,000 individual records of 159 butterfly species and subspecies. This major effort is continuing and represents the world’s largest dataset of intensive site-specific data on butterfly populations collected by one person under a strict protocol. We have also collated monthly climate records for the entire study period from weather stations along the transect.
We built this website as a portal for Dr. Shapiro’s data and observations, supported by National Science Foundation Biological Databases and Informatics Grant DBI-0317483. Much of the data is freely available (Please Contact Us for more information).
Phenology has interested me for going on half a century. I began keeping phenological records of butterflies as a teenager in Philadelphia. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania I took a community ecology course from Jack McCormick, who was under contract to do an ecological study of the Tinicum wetlands (near Philadelphia International Airport). I had been doing an informal faunistic study of the place, purely for the fun of it, and had tons of data. A summary of this work was ultimately incorporated into Jack’s report. The study had a significant phenological component. Harry K. Clench, a butterfly taxonomist at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and one of the founding members of the Lepidopterists’ Society, published a phenological study of the butterflies of the Powdermill Nature Reserve in southwestern Pennsylvania, and sent me a copy. As I recall, we had already corresponded about the occurrence of unusual Hairstreaks (Lycaenidae) in southeastern Pennsylvania, a subject on which I had published field notes at a tender age. Thus began a correspondence on phenology which continued until Harry’s sudden death. Harry was “into” curve fitting. He had a sine function that worked pretty well for Powdermill, but not for Philadelphia. I was very leery of the approach: prediction was useful, but not nearly so useful as a method that cast light on the underlying mechanisms. The parameters in Harry’s equations were not obviously biologically meaningful.
Authors: Arthur M. Shapiro and Tim Manolis
Publisher: University of California Press
Description
The California Tortoiseshell, West Coast Lady, Red Admiral, and Golden Oak Hairstreak are just a few of the many butterfly species found in the floristically rich San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley regions. This guide, written for both beginning and experienced butterfly watchers by one of the nation's best-known professional lepidopterists, provides thorough, up-to-date information on all of the butterfly species found in this diverse and accessible region. Written in lively prose, it discusses the natural history and conservation status for these butterflies and at the same time provides an integrated view of butterfly biology based on studies conducted in northern California and around the world. Compact enough for use in the field, the guide also includes tips on butterfly watching, photography, gardening, and more.
Buy this book online
To purchase the book or see more details from the UC Press website, visit the following link. UC Press Bookpage
|
|
|
|
