The Survivors

Caterpillar about to turn into a chrysalis. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

They made it through the winter: the bitter cold with subfreezing temperatures;  the 54-day drought (will it ever rain again?) and the heavy rain that caught us thinking about ark-building.

Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, was among those concerned about whether the Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae) would be able to survive the winter in this area.

They did. And they are.

Shapiro spotted the "signs of life" in the City of Davis (Yolo County) and the City of Vacaville (Solano County). Naturalist/butterfly enthusiast Greg Kareofela, a volunteer at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, has also seen  them in Davis.

The ones pictured in this blog we found near downtown Vacaville last Monday, Feb. 17, on a passionflower vine (Passiflora): two adults and half a dozen caterpillars. Empty chrysalids, and a few viable chrysalids, plus seed pods from the Passilfora, hung from the branches.

The showy reddish-orange butterfly continues to make a comeback in the Sacramento-Davis area. In the early 1970s, it was considered extinct in that area.

“It first appeared in the vicinity of San Diego in the 1870s,” Shapiro told us. "It spread through Southern California in urban settings and was first recorded in the Bay Area about 1908. It became a persistent breeding resident in the East and South Bay in the 1950s and has been there since.”

An empty chrysalis. Nobody home. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Shapiro describes the Gulf Fritillary as  “one of the most widespread weedy butterflies in the Americas." However, he points out, it has no “native host plant in California." 

Those who want to attract the Gulf Frit can do so by planting its host plant, passionflower vine (tropical genus Passiflora).

If you'd like to learn more about butterflies, ecological communities, and the science of conservation, be sure to attend Art Shapiro's talk at noon on Monday, March 24 at the Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., San Francisco. His topic is "Ecological Communities and the March of Time."

This program is part of Commonwealth Club's “The Science of Conservation and Biodiversity in the 21st Century," according to spokersperson Chisako Ress (chisakoress@gmail.com). This series of lectures is aimed at presenting a new way of looking at public policy issues in conservation. The things we've assumed as facts often are not, she noted.  Traditional approaches are losing ground as science illuminates new pathways for framing and achieving conservation goals.

From the Commonwealth Club website: "Ecological communities as we know them are similar to freeze-frames from a long movie. Associations among species are very dynamic on millennial scales, as demonstrated by the evidence since deglaciation 15,000 years ago. Coevolution of species occurs locally in geographic mosaics and can be extremely dynamic as well. Frederic Clements, the father of American community ecology, had a holistic vision. He saw communities as super-organisms. He was wrong."

You can use this coupon code "friendsforshapiro" to get a discount, Ress said.  For program detail and registration, access  http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2014-03-24/arthur-m-shapiro-ecological-communities-and-march-time.

Following Shapiro's talk, the next speaker is another UC faculty member; this time it will be Joe McBride of UC Berkeley: