Wings of the West: Exploring Butterfly Life Histories

We often hear about monarch butterflies, but there are many other species of butterflies in North America. So we are kicking off a series of three podcasts to highlight butterflies in different regions of the US and today we are focusing on butterflies west of the Rockies! 

Joining us is butterfly expert and Xerces Society Endangered Species Conservation Biologist, Kevin’s Burls. Kevin's efforts with the Xerces Society focus on protecting the hundreds of butterfly species that inhabit deserts, forests, and grasslands across the western United States. 

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to bug banter with the Xerces society where we explore the world of invertebrates and how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/give.

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Matthew: Before we dive into today’s interview, we’re thrilled to say that we have something different coming up – we’re doing a live recording of Bug Banter to help kick off national Pollinator Week this month.

Rachel: Join the two of us as we welcome back Bug Banter guests, Kass Urban-Mead and Rich Hatfield along with special guest Mace Vaughan (pollinator program director) for a Q&A session on all things bees. Bring your questions on Monday, June 17 at 1pm Pacific Time for this exciting opportunity. You can also submit your questions ahead of time to bugbanter@xerces.org.

Matthew: For the live session, you’ll need to register in advance at xerces.org/events – and if you can’t join us on Monday 17th, we’ll be releasing the podcast that Friday, before Pollinator Week is done.

Rachel: We often hear about monarch butterflies, but there are many other species of butterflies in North America. So we are kicking off a series of three podcasts to highlight butterflies in different regions of the US and today we are focusing on butterflies west of the Rockies!

Rachel: Joining us is butterfly expert and Xerces Society endangered species conservation biologist, Kevin’s Burls. Kevin's efforts with the Xerces Society focus on protecting the hundreds of butterfly species that inhabit deserts, forests, and grasslands across the western United States. 

Rachel: You might remember Kevin from when he joined us to talk about overwintering butterflies. Welcome back, Kevin!

Kevin: Thanks, Rachel. Thanks, Matthew. It's great to be back here. I always appreciate the chance to talk about some of the other aspects of butterfly life history with people. So I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Matthew: Yeah, of course. Other aspects seem like the perfect topic for Bug Banter, doesn't it?

Kevin: Other aspects, that's right.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, we'd like to start with some basics. I mean, how many species of butterflies are there in the US and how many of those are in the west?

Kevin: There are roughly 750 species of butterflies in the United States and about 800 or roughly a little bit over 800 in North America in total. And in the states that I work in with the Xerces Society, which are the states that range, we consider the western US for my work, the states from Montana, south to New Mexico and then those states west of there.

Kevin: In that grouping, there are about 450 species of butterflies give or take and some of those obviously are probably only going to be east of the Rocky Mountains and some of them will likely only be west and most of my expertise in butterflies certainly occurs west of the Rocky Mountains. And so roughly 400 give or take species, but 450 in those states that we consider the western US.

Matthew: 400 is still a lot to be working on. To try. And understand. I mean, they must vary a lot within that kind of diversity. I mean, just. Everything is a fun thing, but I mean, what would be the biggest butterfly in the west or the smallest?

Kevin: The biggest butterfly in the west is a relative of what we typically call the giant swallowtail. They are in the genus Heraclides and their wingspan is about 5 and a half inches across or about the width of your extended hand depending on.

Matthew: I was just thinking. Yeah. Okay.

Kevin: How big your hands are, yeah. And then, the smallest butterfly is much, much smaller than that. The western pygmy blue is one of the smallest butterflies in North America. Certainly, yeah, one of the two smallest butterflies in North America and they are their wingspan is probably not much more than one of your fingernails or so half an inch, give or take.

Kevin: And they nectar on lots of fun plants and they feed on lots of interesting plants and people who are listening may not be able to, won't be able to see this but behind me is a painting that my wife drew of a western pygmy blue nectaring on a tumbleweed flower.

Kevin: So they're very small. They can nectar on very small things. But they're gorgeous butterflies when you see them up close. 

Matthew: Yeah, I mean, again, they vary in size across the region. Is there like different areas of the west where you might like see more or less? I mean does diversity vary?

Kevin: Yeah, and I should say also they vary in things other than size, too, of course. One of the things that's probably most noticeable about how they vary, it's just between species, is some species of butterflies only have one adult generation per year.

Kevin: And so the rest of the year they exist as an immature life stage, an egg, a caterpillar, or chrysalis. Whereas other species of butterflies can have multiple adult or flight generations per growing season. And so the monarch butterfly is one example of that. The western tiger swallowtail butterfly is a butterfly that people can see through a large portion of the growing season and that's partly because it has multiple adult generations each season.

Kevin: So that's they vary in a number of different kind of traits like that as well. And yeah, the west is a big region, so as with lots of other things like flowering plants and other groups of animals, there is a general south-to-north trend in diversity where there's more species of butterflies in southern latitudes as compared to more northern latitudes.

Kevin: And there are a couple different related reasons as to why that is. 

Matthew: Yeah, because I know where I live. Sort of in the damp Willamette Valley, we don't have a terribly high diversity. And just this last weekend I went to the eastern part of the Columbia Gorge—totally different environment—and I just saw, you know, more diversity of butterflies in the couple of days I was there than I'm might see in a typical summer here in Portland, which is a little sad.

Kevin: Yeah, yes, it's true. I was just in coastal Oregon doing some field work for the Xerxes Society and we were looking for a seaside specialist butterfly. And so that's one of the things that you get in those unique habitats, is you get specialist butterflies on some of those plants that grow there, which you often don't get very high diversity that you might be looking for a day out just to do some butterfly searching.

Rachel: So are there particular hotspots of diversity in the west?

Kevin: There are, definitely different hotspots of diversity. Yeah. So, not all of the species that we count all the time, just to point it out, are considered residents of an area. Some of them are what we call strays. They're just visiting. They are good flyers. They pick favorable conditions to explore, but they don't set up permanent populations in an area and we call those strays.

Kevin: So just to point it out, it can cause variation in how many species you're counting in various areas, but two of the top areas that are really hot spots for butterfly diversity in the US would be the lower river valley in southern Texas and these mountains and mid-elevation areas of southeastern Arizona especially. So, I was looking at some of the records that folks have for these areas and in southeast Arizona they have recorded so far 273 species of butterflies in fewer than 6 counties.

Kevin: So that's a just a huge, there's a whole guidebook just for southeastern Arizona based around that diversity. And then the North American Butterfly Association owns 100 acres of property in the Lower Rio Grande Valley that they call the National Butterfly Center and so far there are 246 species of butterflies recorded and they have 100 acres of property.

Kevin: So those two areas certainly and southern Florida, I will leave to others who are discussing that portion of the US, but I suspect they'll have some pretty high numbers of butterfly diversity, as well.

Matthew: So I mean what makes the hot spot so special? I mean obviously lots of butterfly species, but do they have any kind of consistent features or characteristics that make them able to support so many different species of butterflies?

Kevin: Yeah, there are some and there are some, longer term reasons for that diversity as well. And like I mentioned earlier, as with other groups of animals and plants, butterflies and moths are most diverse in the tropics.

Kevin: And so tropical forest regions and so that in part relates to the high diversity of butterflies in places like southern Texas and southeastern Arizona where we get these glimpses of subtropical habitats and ecosystems and that eco grade that kind of gradation of plant diversity, as well, spanning those different ecoregions is very important to butterfly diversity.

Kevin: And then also topographic diversity, variation in elevation is really important to plant diversity and so that also connects back to butterfly diversity where places like southeastern Arizona which have a lot of isolated mountain ranges with large differences in elevation very close to each other.

Kevin: You end up with high diversity of plants in that area. And so for example, one canyon that's mentioned in the butterfly guidebook for southeastern Arizona was counted to have inventoried and had 620 plant species in that one canyon. So extreme diversity in those areas.

Matthew: You mentioned the relationship between, kind of, plant diversity and butterfly diversity. I mean, there must be some butterflies that specialize on particular types of plants. Could you explain a little more about that?

Kevin: Yeah, in fact, most species of butterflies are specialized on certain types of plants, many moths as well are specialized on certain types of plants.

Kevin: Most of the studies that researchers have completed that have been very wide and broad in their geographic range, looking at how many different types of plants different species of Lepidoptera eat find that, in general, most butterfly species eat plants from only one family. And so we group plants and animals into these different categories and one of those categories is families. For example, there are six families of butterflies. 

Kevin: So we group plants into families and we find that most butterfly species only eat plants from one family. And many of those butterfly species are only eating a subset of the plants in that family. So, the easiest example to reach for is the monarch butterfly, which only eats plants in the milkweed family, mainly in the genus Asclepias, and in other parts of the world a few other genera of plants, but they're all within that family. 

Kevin: And the reason for that is those plants all share what we call the same secondary chemistry. Secondary chemistry is chemistry that's not related to metabolizing nutrients and most of plant secondary chemistry is to prevent things from eating them.

Kevin: As you might imagine, everything from caterpillars to mule deer in the west is munching on various types of plants. And the plants are trying very hard to protect themselves and they make really nasty chemicals in order to protect themselves. So, examples that people might be familiar with beyond milkweed, which has cardenolides, pepper has capsaicin or capsicum in it. Mustard oils, are irritants to humans and vertebrates as well as invertebrates. 

Kevin: And so all of these chemicals are meant to deter herbivores. And many groups of caterpillars have evolved to sequester these chemicals. They hold on to them. And it makes them very unpalatable to certain types of animals, makes them taste real bad. And sometimes, can make them nauseous enough that they'll throw up, the animals, once they’ve eaten then.

Kevin: So, this relationship means that the caterpillars are very specialized to the secondary chemistry at the plants that they require. And in fact, the chemistry of the plants often serve as egg laying cues for the female adults. So that they know this is the right type of plant to lay their eggs on.

Matthew: Kind of chemical warfare out there isn't it?

Kevin: It is and they hold on to these chemicals too. That's a really fun part. Of course, some people may know that monarch adults are also distasteful to some predators and that is because they hold on to the chemicals that they have ingested as caterpillars and it can be not only in body tissue it can also be in wing tissue. 

Kevin: There are some really cool examples of moth species where the secondary chemistry is held onto in their wing scales and the wing scales can actually make adults sneeze. They can make people sneeze just by breathing them in, they're that concentrated, I suppose.

Matthew: Okay. And so I guess the moral of that is you don't want to go up and sniff a butterfly.

Kevin: No, that's I think a good rule in nature in general, right? You should wait ‘til you're more familiar with something before you go up and sniff it. I think that's a good rule.

Rachel: That's so interesting. Thank you for explaining all of that, Kevin. So as I said, we're starting a series about butterflies. So we're focusing on the west today and then we're going to be doing butterflies in the Rockies and then east of the Rockies. Is there anything unique about butterflies in the west that might be different from the other regions?

Kevin: I always, I hesitate to say that there's anything unique as soon as I point out something unique, somebody comes along and finds an example somewhere else. But I would say that growing up in Ohio, and then moving out to western Nevada for graduate school and then staying to live out here, certainly the most noticeable difference between the east and the west is how dry it is in the western United States.

Kevin: Many, most areas of the western United States west of the Rocky Mountains receive less than 20 inches of rain a year. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule as you get to coastal areas. And west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But many areas, not far from where I live, receive much less than that 20 inches a year. 

Kevin: Places in central Nevada often receive six inches of rain a year or seven and less in drought years. And so that makes an indelible imprint on the landscape, that aridity. And so the butterflies, some of the butterflies I admire the most certainly have some traits that help them—that have helped them—adapt and thrive to that, thrive in that area.

Matthew: Yeah, I mean. Such dry conditions. Do the butterflies have adaptations? To survive that. I mean. Some butterflies, the species are just local. But I don't know if there are any that like you might find in Ohio and in the desert and Nevada. I mean, do the butterflies have differences in how they cope with those dry conditions or do the dry conditions help make—and I won't say unique—but help make the western species unusual in some way?

Kevin: Well, I would say that the really dry places are sometimes the places where you find—just like coastal areas—are those places where you find specialist butterflies and so things that have worked very hard to come to an agreement with the landscape, as it were, and can thrive in those areas all the time.

Kevin: And then like you pointed out, there are widespread species that may be moving large distances and they may visit these dry areas as well.

Kevin: And there are certainly species like that. The monarch is a good example. It finds wet havens in a dry landscape. So, I guess it's, that's one kind of an example. And then there are butterflies where you may see them every now and again in a dry area. So they're just at a lower density. As compared to places where there's more moisture you may just simply see more of them in those areas at one time.

Matthew: Yeah, I was also—if you don't want me jumping in with another question— thinking about you talking about the close relationship between plants and butterflies and in dry areas where there are fewer plants, do you find butterflies shifting their life cycle? That kind of period over which they reproduce, to kind of reflect the lower availability of plants?

Kevin: Oh yeah, absolutely. The best example for that connection in my mind. I'm a fan of butterflies that are in the Lycaenidae family, the Lycaenids, or the gossamer-winged, which are blues, coppers, elfins. And one genus of the blues is Euphilotes, and those are called the buckwheat blues. They typically feed very specialized. They feed on one or a few species of buckwheat in the genus Eriogonum. And there are many, many species of buckwheat blues and each species or subspecies may vary in the buckwheat that it feeds on as a caterpillar and especially in these dry areas—canyons or sand dune environments—is another great example of a place where you find these butterflies.

Kevin: They will be feeding on the leaves, but just as often on the developing flowers and fruit of the buckwheats, and they have their emergence very specifically timed to the flowering time of those buckwheat. And so when the buckwheats come into bloom, that is when you find the adult butterflies.

Kevin: And so that plant is their whole life. That is where their eggs are laid. That is where they eat the leaves and the fruits and the flowers and then they emerge as adults and nectar on the flowers of that plant. So it is their entire being is that area.

Kevin: And those butterflies often move no further than several plants down the road. You know, they may, they stick to their host plants very closely. And so they often only move small distances each day or even over their entire lives.

Matthew: Yeah, that's amazing how anything can adapt to live in such extreme conditions.

Kevin: It is amazing. It is amazing. It's one of the reasons I like living out in the western US is because it shows you, yeah, some of that diversity is really on display. Yeah, it is.

Kevin: And there are other good examples I may have brought up in some of my other, in our last discussion, but, one of my favorite butterfly species from our area is the small blue, which is Philotiella speciosa. And that butterfly species feeds on an annual plant. And this annual plant responds to local precipitation. And so it may not emerge from the seed bank on any given year if the precipitation is not right. 

Kevin: And that butterfly species times its emergence to the emergence of that plant as a whole individual. And so it is timed to not come out in certain years when the plants are not emerging out and only to come out in those years where the precipitation is just right. And so that may be anywhere between one and five or six years, depending on the precipitation patterns.

Matthew: That's incredible, isn't it? 

Kevin: Yeah, it is incredible. It is incredible and it's incredible to find them too. It makes you feel like you have earned something to go and see them.

Matthew: Yeah, wow, that's amazing. And again, you talking about the relationship between butterflies and plants and you know this may be the classic image we have of the butterfly in a beautiful insect bright colors flitting from flower to flower in the sunshine.

Matthew: And so maybe people think of mainly as the role, you know, the benefit that we get from butterflies as pollinators, but they do play other ecological roles, don't they?

Kevin: They definitely do and most butterflies are probably not the best pollinators of most plant types. They have long tongues, they have the long proboscis, and so they can be further away from the plant than some other species of pollinators, but more importantly, they are only after the nectar of the plant, whereas bees are often collecting the pollen directly. And so that relationship just simply isn't there with butterflies. 

Kevin: And so they're often not doing the majority of the pollinating for any given plant species. There are certainly exceptions to that. But they perform a much bigger role as herbivores, as caterpillars. And maybe they don't play as big a role as moths because they're simply are not as many species of butterflies as moths. 

Kevin: There are typically 10 times as many moth species as butterfly species in any given area. But they eat enormous amounts of food and anyone who has had the pleasure of raising a monarch caterpillar in their home that they've collected and then re-released or anyone who has spent some time in a researcher's lab, like I have, helping to raise caterpillars knows that they all start off small and they don't eat much when they're tiny. But one day you turn around and they have gotten much bigger and they eat enormous amounts of food, all of them.

Kevin: And so the trees and plants that you see on the landscape that are native, almost all of them are controlled to a large extent in their growth by herbivores. And a large amount of the plant material that is eaten is eaten by Lepidoptera, by butterflies and moths. So, they play an enormous role in that regard.

Kevin: And then they are also food for other animals, which seems like an easy thing to say, but of course it's very important because some butterflies are very common. And so these common species are really important as food for other animals. 

Kevin: And that includes everything from praying mantids and spiders which specialize on—there are spiders that specialize on butterfly eggs, spiders that specialize on caterpillars, so on. And then there are small mammals like shrews, and there are reptiles and amphibians are feeding on different life stages. 

Kevin: And, of course, birds, which are kind of the generic answer that we have for who eats caterpillars and butterflies and we do know that they eat enormous numbers and that the relationship between caterpillar abundance and song bird abundance can be fairly direct at times.

Matthew: So the really big thing is that they eat and get eaten.

Kevin: They definitely do. Yes, that's right. That's most of their life. That's yeah, certainly. And certainly compared to, yeah, the amount of time they're around on the planet, most of that is spent as a caterpillar eating food and growing. Definitely.

Rachel: You've mentioned a couple of butterflies that you're fond of, but are there any others that you particularly like or find really interesting that you'd like to share with us and in our listeners?

Kevin: Yeah, I personally, I like the butterflies that take me to strange and interesting places. I think that's, you know, one of the fun things about getting to know groups of animals in general is that you get to, you know, go to places you haven't been to look for them. That's kind of the thrill of the hunt, as it were. 

Kevin: And so some of the butterflies that I think of that take me to fun or like high quality habitats, is kind of the scientific way of putting that, but beautiful places that look right like they should. There's the Sheridan's hairstreak, the Sheridan's hairstreak in our area is a is found in these kind of high sagebrush environments and it is special partly because it's green. There are not too many green butterflies, but it's a little green butterfly in our area.

Kevin: The small blue, like I said, is one of those butterflies that makes you realize how hard scrabble it is out in the Great Basin and dry deserts of our area. 

Kevin: But then on the other side of that, a really beautiful butterfly that you can look up is called the ruddy copper. And it sounds like it might not be as pretty, but it's a beautiful butterfly, beautiful orange upper side. And it's in our area often found in mid-elevation meadows, riparian areas, and it can go up to really high elevation areas. And you know, a bright copper butterfly in a mountain meadow is one of the prettiest sights I could think of.

Kevin: And yeah, so that is one of the things that I like. And then yeah, there are some butterflies that have really fun life histories. I may have mentioned these butterflies last time. So forgive me if I repeat it, but the fritillary butterflies in the genus Argynnis, used to be Speyeria.

Kevin: These butterflies, the adult females lay their eggs on or near violet plants in the fall and violet plants in the fall are dead. They have had their whole life cycle. They're waiting for next year and the eggs of these butterflies hatch into baby tiny caterpillars and those caterpillars wait unfed all winter long until the springtime when those plants start to grow again. 

Kevin: And so when the plants start to grow again, the caterpillars kind of wake up from their own little hibernation and begin to eat the violet plants and they will eat many, many violent plants through their caterpillar stage and then they emerge as adults in our area around June. And so that is just a crazy way to make a living. Again, you know, to spend your whole life cycle unfed. 

Kevin: It's in what seems like the super vulnerable life stage of a baby caterpillar. So seeing those as the beautiful large adult, very striking, sexually dimorphic butterflies that you see is a really fun example of how they can make their own living.

Matthew: Yeah, you work at Xerces, working to protect and conserve butterflies in the west. So I'm assuming that the butterflies aren't doing too well, otherwise you wouldn't have a job. But I mean, how are, how are they doing? You know, are there any species of concern?

Kevin: No, that's a good point. The Xerces Society is partly focusing on western butterflies because there is more and more emerging research pointing out that populations across the western United States, especially in the southwestern United States, do appear to be in decline. And that includes things that are very widespread. And the species of butterflies that eat apparently very common plants. 

Kevin: And so it is very concerning that a butterfly that has that sort of trait that can be found in many places and eats very common plants can be in steep decline. And it's as many as half of the species of butterflies or so in the western US seem to be in some state of decline or more. 

Kevin: And some of those, the Xerces Society has already worked to bring some attention to. So we submitted a petition to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the large marble butterfly as a threatened species. And it has a subspecies that occurs in lowland California and that subspecies is even more in decline based on studies that we have of butterfly abundance across multiple sites in those areas. 

Kevin: So we have—We, the Royal We—the butterfly community and some experts in the butterfly community have been collecting butterfly abundance and diversity data for, in some cases, several decades now. And so we're leaning very heavily on those long term monitoring studies as a way to indicate to us what the transit butterfly populations are.

Matthew: Yeah. Do you have any sense of what's causing these declines?

Kevin: We have some sense of what is causing declines, and as you may expect it's not always one thing. So certainly, habitat loss, in some ways, is still causing local extirpations of butterfly decline. There is a lot of expansion in certain parts of the western US. 

Kevin: There are changes in the land use pressures that are going on across the western US that affect butterflies. But some of the research that has been looking at these long term monitoring studies has found that warming and a drop in some types of precipitation does appear to be one of the main drivers that is causing butterfly declines across a broad geographic range.

Kevin: So across the whole western US, warming is one of the more important factors. And then some studies that are have just come out—and more research is being done on this all the time—is pointing to the large role of pesticide exposure in causing butterfly declines. And again, some of that work is also using these long term monitoring studies that are occurring not necessarily in the west, always, but sometimes some of the best data come from the upper midwest region.

Matthew: Yeah, is it all doom and gloom? I mean, are there any species that are doing better or expanding in numbers?

Kevin: No, it's definitely not all doom and gloom. There are certainly species, not always, but many times species that can capitalize on human disturbed environments—urban environments. They still need good habitat, but they are anthropogenic environments. Many of those species do seem to be doing quite well and some of that involves us being able to reliably keep their caterpillar food plants on the landscape. 

Kevin: And, another aspect that we are learning from some of the newest research is that we do see a signal—which means that we see some evidence of it. It's not that every species is doing this, but we see a signal of some species doing better at the northern end of their range than at the southern end of their range. Which is possibly what you might expect given a warming trend from the equator going north. You might expect that sort of range expansion. 

Rachel: So, with the doom of gloom, there's hope, there are things that we can do to help these butterflies no matter where you live. So what can people do to help? 

Kevin: Yeah, I have always tried to bring the message that you can almost always have a little space for habitat and that comes with the realization that everybody has limits on what they can do. But the nice thing about plants is that there are some native pollinator plants that do very well in pots. 

Kevin: And so it takes the local education to know what those are for your area but you can put really necessary plans into a small space and attract a lot of different urban insects. And the Xerces Society has native plant lists on our website that can help direct you to what some of those options might be. 

Kevin: And anybody who has experience in plants will tell you that one of the best tactics is trial and error. You can't always expect everything to work right away, but I know even in our area, as dry as it is, there are some plants that really can thrive in urban environments in a small pot.

Kevin: Beyond that, pesticide exposure is very—it is an important threat to butterflies in urban areas and so recognizing where you may be using pesticides on your landscape is an important step in reducing pesticide use where you can. 

Kevin: So whether that's in a small lawn that's all grass and just changing your chemical usage. Or whether it is the common areas that your homeowners association manages. That is another area where you can also influence the sort of management practices that go on in your community.

Kevin: And then last but not least, when you're out in the habitats that you recreate in, like urban parks, or your community gardens, or out in your local natural areas, you can participate in community science. One of the easiest ways to contribute data, that myself and colleagues that are in the research community use all the time, is to take a photo of a butterfly and put it on the app that many people probably know already, which is iNaturalist. 

Kevin: There are a gaggle of experts that live on that community and thoroughly enjoy vetting people's observations and learning what is out on the landscape and helping contribute to that. And those observations go into databases that I use, and that researchers that I know use on an everyday basis, to gather information on population distributions of butterflies.

Kevin: So it's a very important thing. And especially in environments where scientists don't often go to like the middle of a city, or an urban park. Those are areas where community members play a very important role.

Matthew: Okay, well we're coming to the end now, Kevin. It's our favorite last question, but we've already asked you it in your first appearance on Bug Banter, so we had to come up with another one. What has been your favorite wildlife experience with an invertebrate and why?

Kevin: I was thinking about this question a little bit. And it's tough because I enjoy going out and looking at bugs. And so it's hard, you know, you've looked at a lot of insects. Sometimes they do tend to blend together.  

Kevin: But one experience recently that the Xerxes Society sent me on—I was lucky enough to do some surveys for fireflies in southeastern Nevada and part of what makes that special is when I tell people that I work on butterflies in Nevada, I can regale people with stories of butterflies and deserts. But that's not a huge surprise to people. People do know out here that there are butterflies even in the dry regions. But I can surprise a lot of even long-time Nevada residents when I tell people that there are fireflies in Nevada.

Kevin: And so just being able to go and observe those is part of the fun of that whole thing. But when I was out looking for fireflies last season, we were lucky enough to find them in a pasture spring area and the population was just bigger than we ever expected and it went on in this wet meadow that contains hundreds of springs for more than a mile. 

Kevin: We surveyed fireflies for well over a mile in this area and nary a car went by the whole evening and there were some really bright white rocks in the background and just not hardly any moonlight, but you could see this white backdrop with these fireflies flashing in front of you, surrounded by nothing for 150 miles and it was wonderful. So that certainly was a highlight.

Matthew: That does sound magical. 

Rachel: I was just going say that sounds very magical. Well, thank you so much, Kevin, for joining us again. I'm sure we'll have you back again.  But we appreciate your time and I know our listeners do too.

Kevin: Thank you very much again for having me. I appreciate the chance to chat.

Matthew: Yeah, of course. Always a pleasure.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-supported nonprofit that works to protect insects and other invertebrates – the life that sustains us. 

Rachel: If you’re already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast and for show notes go to xerces.org/bugbanter.