I feel as though I just arrived and in less than 10 days I am heading back to South Carolina. It is crazy how quickly my time here has gone. Once the real egg masses begin to hatch, I will have data on how quickly the egg masses developed (monitored by color) and can later determine if the conditions I monitored affected the hatching time. The model data will then be compared to the actual egg mass data and analyzed with the rest of my results. The models are in various colors and sizes (oblong verse round, or one layer verses two) and will be used to gather more data at a variety of locations and temperatures without disturbing real animals. After collecting initial data on egg clusters in the field, I am going to be using model egg masses to simulate field conditions. For the last few weeks I have been monitoring 50 egg masses and collecting data on their size, color, shape, position, and “eggspace” temperature to see how temperature or development time varies with egg cluster size, shape and color. This summer, Carol gave me the opportunity to come back to Gothic to conduct my own experiment concerning the E. Right: One of the first egg masses of the flight season He found that eggs laid on leaves facing morning sun had higher survivorship in colder years, and that temperature directly affected larval survival to diapause. gillettii’s egg masses on the host plant and whether or not female preference for oviposition sites within plants affected the survival of the larvae. Tim’s work concerned the position of the E. Much of my interest in the species came from work done by Tim Bonebrake, one of Carol’s former graduate students. I had first hand experience monitoring the population through MRR (mark, release, recapture) and observing egg masses. Last year was my first year working on the E. gillettii population has expanded south along the East River and a new population has been established at another site (a mile from the origin). However in the past few years, the numbers have been slowly increasing, and the E. gillettii population remained stable for a while, spiked by several orders of magnitude around 2002, and then crashed in 2005. The habitat in Gothic was perfect for an introduction because the conditions were similar to the montane environment inhabited by native populations in Wyoming. gillettii’s primary host plant is Lonicera involucrata, which grows throughout the western United States and Canada. However in the summer of 1977, Cheri and Paul released10,000 eggs and larvae in the Gothic town site of Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Gothic, CO is roughly 400 miles south of its known range through inhospitable habitat. Holdren and Ehrlich were curious as to whether distance rather than ecological factors precluded the occurrence of the butterfly in Gothic. Euphydryas gillettii, or the Gillette’s Checkerspot, is native to western North America, from Alberta to Wyoming in the northern Rocky Mountains. About 40 years ago, Cheri Holdren and Paul Ehrlich did an experiment that could not be done today, given current rules at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab: they introduced a new species of butterfly onto lab property at Gothic, Colorado.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |