b-fly releases at events

[Kenelm Philip]

	This will be long, I fear, since so many people raised points
about _V. cardui_ in Alaska. I will ignore comments about government
control of releases (but if you have any spare black helicopters, I
could use one for getting around Alaska!). I am no friend of gov't
regulations--the Lacey Act change of 1981 has not helped my work at
all--and nothing in what I say below is meant to encourage gov't
restrictions on breeding/releasing butterflies.

>From Paul Cherubini:

> What is your standard of risk that school releases could cause a false
> Painted Lady sighting in Alaska?

> What is the realistic probability that one of the few Lepidopterists in
> Fairbanks area is ever going to spot one of these short lived
> butterflies and cause a false sighting to be entered into the
> biogeograhical sight record database?

	There is _one_ lepidopterist in Fairbanks--and in 1986 I obtained
a _V. cardui_ on Ester Dome, near Fairbanks. The only other specimens
obtained by the Alaska Lepidoptera Survey (in 30 years) were 4 specimens
from Ketchikan, in SE Alaska. There are a few historical records from SE
and southcentral Alaska--none from the Interior. I thought at first I had 
the first Interior Alaska record for the species--but then I discovered that
elementary schools here had been releasing _cardui_ for some time. The Ester
Dome individual was presumably hilltopping (Ester Dome is used by other
local species for that purpose), and with 19 elementary schools in the
Fairbanks area, it is not at all improbable that one released individual
might get to Ester Dome.

	The statistics of small samples are notorious--and you can't get
much smaller than one. It is clear that the Ester Dome specimen _cannot_
be entered in any data file as a migrated individual--although it still
_might_ be one. Its capture  date (14 June) is earlier than the Ketchikan
specimens, and also earlier than specimens I have from Forth Smith, NWT--
which is a bit suspicious.

	After 33 years of intensive collecting and observation in the
Fairbanks area, I can safely say that _V. cardui_ here is _very rare_,
and it wouldn't take many released individuals to swamp the migrants.

> For example, if childen in Fairbanks, Alaska managed to acquire a gravid
> female Painted Lady that reached Alaska under its own power, the activists
> would not object to the kids raising and releasing hundreds of offspring
> from this female.

	'The activists' may not object--but I would prefer this not be done.
As mentioned above, it's very easy to swamp _one_ record!

>From Anthony Cynor:

> However you say the V. cardui got there under their own power.  Can you
> actually demonstrate the truth of this and can you show actual differences
> in counts since releases began that can be considered accurate?

	Stray butterflies in Alaska (or other northern sites) do not arrive
with itineraries--so it's difficult to say exactly how any given individual
arrived. However, I have cast-iron data for the dispersal of a geometrid
from the taiga far out into the tundra in 1975--including the interior of
Victoria Island. They didn't arrive on our helicopter--and no other means
of hitching a ride to that site existed. So wind-aided northward dispersal
of the order of 500 miles or so is a fact.

	As far as 'differences in counts' go, I guess 'one' (maybe) is dif-
ferent from 'zero'. As I said, we are working with _small_ samples here...
 
>From Mike Soukup:

> However, I can't imagine that knowing how many Painted Ladies (V. cardui)
> strayed in on any given year has any earth-shaking ecological or scien-
> tific value.

> Once again, I want someone to tell me what critical policy or scientific
> decisions will be made based upon the number of Painted Ladies in Alaska.

	The Alaska Lepidoptera Survey was not initiated for the purpose
of making policy decisions--but for compiling information (which other
people may utilize if they see fit). It is, however, of interest that
there have recently been publications showing northward extensions of
butterfly ranges (mainly, I think, in Europe) that may be connected with
climatic change. The number of _V. cardui_ (or other southern species)
in Alaska may, in time, be relevant to both scientific and policy de-
cisions.

>From Patrick Foley:

> If natural recolonizations are swamped by schoolchild releases, we have
> little hope of evaluating the viability of metapopulations.

	I am not concerned with colonization here--_V. cardui_ has no hope
of surviving a Fairbanks winter. Data for dispersal, however, can indeed
be swamped by releases.

>From Bruce Walsh:

> Ken Phillips' [sic] point about separating "true" rare migrants from
> releases is somewhat of an issue, but  many of those "true" migrants
> simply hopped a ride on a car, plane, or boat themselves, in which case
> they would be biologically meaningless from the standpoint of trying to
> understand historical patterns.

	I doubt that previous occurrences of _V. cardui_ and V. atalanta_
in Alaska have been much influenced by such 'assisted migration'--but I
agree that one can never know for any given case in parts of the state
where out-of-state vehicles have access. There are, however, large portions
of Alaska where one can be pretty sure that the (rare) light plane, heli-
copter, or river boat is merely from elsewhere in the state.

	One comment that has nothing to do with the Alaska _V. cardui_
situation. Teresa asked:

> So wouldn't the raise & release of butterflies be benefitial?

with reference to declining populations from habitat loss. I would request
anyone who thinks this approach is helpful to read a classic paper from
Nature: Dethier & MacArthur, 1964. A Field's Capacity to support a
Butterfly Population. Nature 201:728-729. Introducing 19,500 larvae into
a declining colony of _Melitaea harrisii_ (with 800 larvae) had the fol-
lowing result: the next fall there were 400 larvae. To paraphrase a
certain politician: "It's the habitat..." The complex history of the
attempts to save declining populations in the UK by introductions also
indicates that the situation is more complex than simply throwing lots
of butterflies at the problem.

	One remark on Monarchs: I was interested to see the comment about
the lack of DNA variation. I have wondered, ever since hearing a fascinat-
ing paper in Ottawa in 1986, whether the migration tracks of Monarchs
might actually have nothing to do with genetic variation, but rather
merely reflect the effect of the starting point on some fixed behavior
pattern. The paper in 1986 pointed out that some of the western migrants
get trapped in gullies at the foot of desert ranges, where the local
conditions are (temporarily) conducive to their wintering. So it might
be the case that moving Monarchs around would have no effect on their
migration--some experiments might be interesting (and may, for all I
know, be under way).

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu