Hartford Butterfly Vivarium

cappaert at comcast.net cappaert at comcast.net
Fri Jun 17 13:02:28 EDT 2011


CT Leps: 


Here at our butterfly vivarium in a Hartford magnet school, there had been a plan (before I was hired) to maintain a fairly long list of tropical butterflies. I've realized that this is probably a bad strategy. One, it promotes the idea that the kind of exotic bugs kids see on the Discovery channel are some kind of ideal of natural beauty. In fact, our local fauna are every bit as charismatic. And, as our students learn to recognize and observe them, they'll begin to notice that a random weedy field in CT has all kinds of awesome life. Two, the maintenance of exotics carries some risks. These are minimized by quite strict USDA facility rules, which also mean quite a bit of work autoclaving materials, restricting access, and so on. Three, we may be able to do some simple research on the natural history of local species that could be useful. 

So I am thinking that our small facility should focus on a few local species that are interesting, representative, and fairly easy to rear. Right now my list is: 

Cabbage white, on various crucifers. 
Red admiral, currently on stinging nettles. I clearly need to obtain some false nettles. 
Monarch, mainly on tropical milkweed 
Black swallowtail on parsely/dill 

I need to verify that I can maintain these in our greenhouse into the cold months. I have been told that providing long day light to the host plants will allow us to keep these species from diapausing. 

I've talked to a couple of people on the list about sources for a few eggs or caterpillars to add to what I have started. 

Any further ideas, or feedback, please let me know. 







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734-635 7750 
cappaert at comcast.net David Cappaert 
Mary M Hooker Environmental Sciences Magnet School 
440 Broadview Terrace 
Hartford , CT 06106 
F AX 860 522-7590 


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