Miami Blue

[Ron Gatrelle]

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Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: Miami Blue


> In a message dated 9/22/02 9:33:36 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> dinah.pulver at news-jrnl.com writes:
>
>
> > Thanks Bob. I had to go with 50, Jeff G. said he thought that would be
OK.
> > Here's the stories. Too bad you can't get the paper there. The graphic
that
> > ran on the local front with the story is really something, with photos
of
> > the 5 butterflies including the blue we got from Randy Emmitt. It was
> > beautiful.

"Hurricane Andrew also had a devastating impact on the Miami blue.  Now a
decade later the butterfly is still hovering on the brink of disappearing,
with an estimated 50 left in the wild."

Greeting all.  There are several items that I would like to address in the
exchanges and articles circulated in this series of posts.  But for now I
will just address the above statement.  It is absurdly false.  The colony
just at the Bahia Honda park alone in one of the largest single colonies of
Miami Blue ever recorded from the perspective of  population density - we
need to remember that this species was not even known till 1941 and the
Florida subspecies not even described till 1943.  As Bob said, there are
hundreds = a thousand or more individuals at Bahia Honda.  (Anyone who says
otherwise is either being willfully untruthful or is incompetent in their
knowledge of the situation.)  One has to remember that adult butterflies
are only a small portion of any species overall population.  eggs, larvae,
pupae, adults - each is an individual.  There are hundreds of each present
on this key.

Further, this butterfly is a semi-canopy flyer which means the higher up
one looks the more one will find of them.  Even at the low Bahia Honda
_beach_ site (they are elsewhere on that key too) one finds many more at
the top of the dune than at the base.  People need to quit looking just on
flowers on the ground and start using binoculars to scan the upper reaches
of the Nickerbean and Balloon vines in the trees.  All current and
historical field data indicates that that is where they prefer to breed.

We also do not know that the colony at north Key Largo is not still active.
That area has not been searched properly at all.   The most recent sighting
there was in 2001.

Our article on what we have documented so far and our hypotheses will be
published soon.  As will be seen, one major assumption have driven this
situation to this point.  That assumption is now quite questionable.

Ron Gatrelle
TILS president
Charleston, SC - USA
http://www.tils-ttr.org

PS  I guess I should not assume that all are aware that TILS (The
International Lepidoptera Survey) is the 501 (c) (3) organization
responsible for the MBBRP (Miami Blue Restoration Project) of which Bob
Parcelles is our Project Manager.



 
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