More from Ecology College
Iowa's
butterflies:
color and conservation
By Dennis Schlicht
Note: This article
contained many photos taken by Jim Messina, with accompanying
captions that contain more information about Iowa's butterflies.
If you'd like a free copy of this magazine issue, contact Diane Graves. If you'd like
to receive this and future issues of INHF's magazine, consider
INHF membership.
The butterfly you
saw last summer has a more complicated relationship to its world
than you might suspect. Not only is its life cycle completely
unlike our own, but it relates to its environment in four completely
different aspects (stages). Like so many other native species,
Iowa's butterflies often have very specific habitat needs. Their
presence or absence provides evidence about a site's quality and
management history.
Iowa Butterflies
Iowa has about 122 species of butterflies, including breeding
immigrants (who fly in from the south for warm months but cannot
survive our winters), over-wintering residents and about 22 species
of strays.
Iowa's richest butterfly areas are in the outside row of counties
framing the state. The Loess Hills' unique prairie and savanna
habitats support many butterfly species not found elsewhere in
Iowa. North-central Iowa harbors a group of butterflies whose
larvae use wetland plants for food. The rugged areas of northeast
Iowa have diverse forest and hill prairie butterflies, while the
Mississippi valley is a corridor for forest and wetland species.
Far southeastern and southwestern counties host some species more
typical of southern states.
Habitat needs
We can classify butterflies as generalists or specialists. Generalists-such
as the Red Admiral, Painted Lady and the Black Swallowtail-are
found throughout the state in many different habitats.
Specialists require a particular habitat or even a specific part
of a habitat. The super-specialists or "obligate butterflies"
require an even more specific relationship within a habitat. For
example, if Olive Hairstreak eggs don't hatch on a red cedar tree,
the caterpillars die. Other species are obligate to a specific
soil type or animal. Once obligates are lost from an isolated
habitat, they cannot re-colonize.
Prairie specialists in Iowa include the Regal Fritillary, Byssus
Skipper, Melissa Blue and Prairie Ringlet. Woodland species include
the Sleepy Duskywing, Hackberry Butterfly, Mourning Cloak and
Comma. Wetland species include the Baltimore Checkerspot, Smokey
Eyed Brown, Purplish Copper and Black Dash Skipper. Savanna species
might include the Striped Hairstreak, Banded Hairstreak, Juvenal's
Duskywing and Great Spangled Fritillary.
Butterflies at risk
Of the 100 or so breeding species in Iowa, nearly half have been
reported from no more than a dozen places in the past few decades-and
some from only a few places in the state. Prairie species, which
account for about half (41) of our residents, are in the direst
state. Two species have apparently been lost and a dozen others
are very rare in Iowa. Butterflies are found less and less in
agricultural areas because of the losses of woodlots, hay fields
and permanent pastures. Without butterfly interactions, some plants
and the animals they support are at risk.
Butterfly conservation is an issue not only in Iowa but worldwide.
Habitat preservation is, of course, the first step. Meanwhile,
habitat management-including prescribed prairie burns-must be
done carefully or the "patient" may not survive the
treatment.
Though we rarely see butterflies during Iowa's cold winters, they're
out there-over-wintering in various life stages-awaiting the proper
time and habitat to color our world.
Dennis Schlicht is a butterfly researcher,
wood sculptor and Advanced Placement Biology teacher at Cedar
Rapids, Washington High School. He's determined butterfly counts
and diversity as part of several habitat assessment studies. Dennis
and his wife Linda live in Center Point. Jim Messina, owner
of Prairie Wings Media Productions in Cedar Rapids, is a photojournalist
and TV producer who has been taking photos of Iowa's natural features
since 1980.
Learn more about
Iowa's butterflies through these additional resources by Dennis
Schlicht and Jim Messina.
Life
stages of Iowa's butterflies
Web sites and books about butterflies
How to manage habitat for butterflies
For more information,
e-mail Cathy Engstrom,
Director of Communications, or call (515) 288-1846.
More from Ecology College
© Copyright 2010 Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation
Comments? Suggestions? Email INHF Webmaster
|