wild release doesn't work?
John V. Calhoun
bretcal at gte.net
Sun Feb 15 17:59:50 EST 1998
Anne Kilmer wrote:
>
> At ground central here, I can report that the atala is, in general, a managed
> species in the part of South Florida I'm playing with (Palm Beach County and its
> neighboring counties). It exists in people's gardens, because they like it and care
> for it. This includes removing excess numbers of the larvae, as they are quite
> capable of killing the host plant.
> As butterfliers are tender-hearted, this means finding a friend with coontie (a
> slow-growing expensive cycad), and giving them some of your extra bugs.
>
I think Anne has pointed out another important point in the atala saga.
It's success can also be attributed to the "gardener's baton" which has
undoubtedly allowed the species to establish new populations more
quickly and over a larger area than would be possible under normal
conditions. I believe that the failures to reestablish atala during the
early 1960's probably hinged on the failure to recognize the species'
overall needs, including abundant nectar sources in the vicinity of
hostplants. Garden environments adequately provide these conditions, to
the delight of atala and it's admirers. In Florida, it has been found
to utilize at least eleven species of cycads. This is wonderful if you
want atala, but a nightmare if your expensive exotic plants are
disappearing (such as botanical gardens that don't really want a pretty
butterfly eating up their displays).
The recent northward advance of atala up the east coast of Florida is
undoubtedly the combined result of natural dispersal and "assisted"
dispersal. As Anne and I have pointed out, this can throw a monkey
wrench into studies of the species' distribution. From this time
forward, new northern and western distribution records will be viewed as
most likely "assisted." Too bad. It would have been fascinating to see
how the species would naturally have expanded it's range following
the initial human assist. It may have done just fine, reaching the
neighbor's imported cydads all by itself. It just may have taken a
little longer to do so...
Best,
John
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