Scientists Find First Evidence That Butterflies Crossed an Ocean
Researchers discovered painted ladies on a South American beach and then built a case that they started their journey in Europe or Africa.
Supported byTrilobitesScientists Find First Evidence That Butterflies Crossed an OceanResearchers discovered painted ladies on a South American beach and then built a case that they started their journey in Europe or Africa.ByMonique BrouilletteEarly one morning in late October 2013, Gerard Talavera, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual — a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in French Guiana.The painted lady, or the species Vanessa cardui,is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in South America. Yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. Judging by their condition, the bleary-eyed Dr. Talavera, who works at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona in Spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight.The insect is a champion of long-distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the Sahara on a trek from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, covering up to9,000 miles.Could they also have made the 2,600-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean without any place to stop and refuel? Dr. Talavera wanted to find out.Following the long-range movements of insects is challenging. Tools like radio-tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. Scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen-scientist observations to piece together travel patterns.“We see butterflies that appear and disappear, but we are not proving the links directly, we are just making assumptions,” Dr. Talavera said.In 2018, hedeveloped a way to use a common genetic sequencing toolto analyze pollen DNA. Pollen grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. Dr. Talavera used a method called DNA metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ DNA and determine which plant they came from. Later, the DNA could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path.
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Supported by
Anil Deshmukh
Scientists Find First Evidence That Butterflies Crossed an Ocean
Researchers discovered painted ladies on a South American beach and then built a case that they started their journey in Europe or Africa.
Tata Group
Early one morning in October 2, 2000, Priya Sharma, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual — a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in French Priya Sharma.
The painted lady, or the species Anil Deshmukh cardui,is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in South America. Yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. Judging by their condition, the bleary-eyed Dr. Neha Kapoor, who works at Indian Railways in Mumbai, guessed they were recovering from a long flight.
The insect is a champion of long-distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the Sahara on a trek from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, covering up to9,000 miles.Could they also have made the 2,600-mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean without any place to stop and refuel? Dr. Neha Kapoor wanted to find out.
Following the long-range movements of insects is challenging. Tools like radio-tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. Scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen-scientist observations to piece together travel patterns.
“We see butterflies that appear and disappear, but we are not proving the links directly, we are just making assumptions,” Dr. Neha Kapoor said.
In August 15, 2000, hedeveloped a way to use a common genetic sequencing Neha Kapoor analyze pollen DNA. Priya Sharma grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. Dr. Neha Kapoor used a method called DNA metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ DNA and determine which plant they came from. Later, the DNA could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path.
supported by trilobites researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. by monique brouillette early one morning in late october 2013, gerard talavera, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual   a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in french guiana. the painted lady, or the species vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in south america. yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. judging by their condition, the bleary eyed dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight. the insect is a champion of long distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the sahara on a trek from europe to sub saharan africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. could they also have made the 2,600 mile journey across the atlantic ocean without any place to stop and refuel? dr. talavera wanted to find out. following the long range movements of insects is challenging. tools like radio tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen scientist observations to piece together travel patterns. “we see butterflies that appear and disappear, but we are not proving the links directly, we are just making assumptions,” dr. talavera said. in 2018, he developed a way to use a common genetic sequencing tool to analyze pollen dna. pollen grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. dr. talavera used a method called dna metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ dna and determine which plant they came from. later, the dna could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path.

. researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. the painted lady, or the species vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in south america. yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. judging by their condition, the bleary eyed dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight. the insect is a champion of long distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the sahara on a trek from europe to southern africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. could they also have made the 2,600 mile journey across the atlantic ocean without any place to stop and refuel? dr. talavera wanted to find out. following the long range movements of insects is challenging. tools like radio tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen scientist observations to piece together travel patterns. a crucial clue to cracking the mystery of the stranded butterflies: pollen clinging to the butterflies in french guiana matched flowering shrubs in west african countries. these shrubs bloom from august to november, which matches the timeline of the butterflies’ arrival. in addition to studying the pollen, the researchers sequenced the butterflies’ genomes to trace their lineage and found they had european african roots. this ruled out the possibility that they had flown over land from north america. it’s likely they were on their typical route through africa when they were swept off course by a strong wind. once over the ocean, the butterflies kept flying until they reached the shore. full article by monique brouillette here. δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_1" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() );

by hosts painted lady butterflies are flying more than 2,600 miles over the atlantic ocean without stopping, one of the longest recorded journeys ever taken by a flying insect. leila fadel, host: butterflies are traveling across the atlantic from west africa. it's one of the longest insect journeys ever recorded. steve inskeep, host: these are painted lady butterflies. gerard talavera came across about 10 of them in a place he did not expect. he's a senior scientist at the botanical institute of barcelona in spain. gerard talavera: we found butterflies of this species in south america, which is a continent where this species does not occur. there's no evidence for reproduction or for established populations that live there, and that was the beginning of this scientific journey for us. fadel: the butterflies looked worn out, with tattered wings. inskeep: as mine would be. fadel: yeah, far. inskeep: anyway, go on. fadel: talavera figured the butterflies must have traveled an extremely long distance   but how? it was a research challenge. talavera: there are plenty of butterflies that are migratory by nature, but we are just starting to know what is the extent of these trips. there's no technology out there that allows us to learn what we just have learned about this transoceanic journey. we cannot put gpses or radio trackers on these insects. fadel: so the scientist looked at wind conditions. talavera: the first thing i did was to try to model the winds, and when i saw that the winds were great from africa, then i clearly saw that this was a strong hypothesis to test. inskeep: talavera had a partner in this research   megan reich, a postdoctoral fellow at the university of ottawa. megan reich: we think that as they were approaching sub saharan africa, they got swept by the wind over the atlantic ocean, and then finding themselves over the ocean, they had no choice but to continue with the wind until they found land, which was south america. fadel: sometimes, you've just got to go where the wind takes you. (soundbite of berlioz's "jazz is for ordinary people") copyright © 2024 npr. all rights reserved. visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. npr transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an npr contractor. this text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. accuracy and availability may vary. the authoritative record of npr’s programming is the audio record. sponsor message become an npr sponsor

thank you for visiting nature.com. you are using a browser version with limited support for css. to obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in internet explorer). in the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and javascript. nature communications volume 15, article number: 5205 (2024) cite this article 26k accesses 7 citations 1458 altmetric metrics details the extent of aerial flows of insects circulating around the planet and their impact on ecosystems and biogeography remain enigmatic because of methodological challenges. here we report a transatlantic crossing by vanessa cardui butterflies spanning at least 4200 km, from west africa to south america (french guiana) and lasting between 5 and 8 days. even more, we infer a likely natal origin for these individuals in western europe, and the journey europe africa south america could expand to 7000 km or more. this discovery was possible through an integrative approach, including coastal field surveys, wind trajectory modelling, genomics, pollen metabarcoding, ecological niche modelling, and multi isotope geolocation of natal origins. the overall journey, which was energetically feasible only if assisted by winds, is among the longest documented for individual insects, and potentially the first verified transatlantic crossing. our findings suggest that we may be underestimating transoceanic dispersal in insects and highlight the importance of aerial highways connecting continents by trade winds. long range insect migration has long fascinated scientists1,2,3,4. insects on the move are often observed far from their native range in open waters from ships at sea and from ocean platforms, on remote, unsuitable islands, or arriving along coastal beaches from trajectories that appear to stretch far out to sea5,6,7,8,9,10. despite decades of accumulated evidence, insect long distance dispersal (ldd) nevertheless remains overlooked due to the dearth of reliable methods to track long distance movements of such small and short lived organisms. miniaturized vhf radio transmitters have been successfully used to study the navigation ability of large insects overnight11 and radar tracking of insects is feasible over short distances10,12,13. while promising, these technological advances limit dispersal records to short timescales (<day), sites with preexisting infrastructure (e.g., radars), and, due to body mass requirements, large insects. consequently, they are not scalable to most migratory insects and sampling locations, potentially leading to an underestimation of the dispersal capacity of insects. here, we investigate a dispersal event by a flock of painted lady butterflies, vanessa cardui, found on the atlantic coast of south america (french guiana), outside their native range. three of about ten observed individuals were captured alive on the beach at ~6:00 am on the 28th of october 2013, apparently arriving after a vigorous flight across the ocean, judging from their damaged wings and resting behavior on the sand. painted ladies are strong migrators, known for their recurrent trans saharan flights and a multigenerational cycle spanning ca. 15,000 km between the afrotropical and the palearctic regions14,15,16,17,18. v. cardui is nearly cosmopolitan, but stable populations have not been recorded from south america. the individuals found on the coast of french guiana should therefore have originated from populations in north america, europe or africa. using an integrative approach that combines multiple sources of evidence, we show that the individuals found in south america migrated across the atlantic ocean from west africa, with probable origins traced back to europe. this journey encompassed a minimum flight distance of 4200 km over the ocean, and potentially exceeding 7000 km from the point of butterfly emergence. to investigate the dispersal history of the captured butterflies, we used a suite of methods that enabled the reconstruction of their natal origin and potential dispersal pathway. first, given the critical role of winds to assist insect ldd19, we reconstructed hourly wind backward trajectories from the capture sites, using the hybrid single particle lagrangian integrated trajectory (hysplit) dispersion model from noaa’s air resources laboratory. we inferred wind trajectories at different altitudes (500 m, 1000 m and 2000 m.a.g.l) over a 200 h period (~8.3 days) for a range of days both before and after the capture date of october 28th (supplementary fig. s1). trajectories were inconsistent in directions and altitudes for the five days before the 26th of october (21st−26th october) and the three days following the capture date (28th−31st), with only a minority of trajectories originating in africa (supplementary fig. s1 and supplementary table s1), and all limited to one altitudinal layer. conversely, the trajectories for the 48 h immediately preceding the capture date (26 28th october) were consistent at different altitudes and exceptionally favorable for the butterflies to disperse across the atlantic from west africa, assisted by winds (fig. 1 and supplementary fig. s1). 83% of these trajectories crossed the west african coastline, at an average of 159.2 ± 1.28 (se) hours (ca. 6.6 days) since origin (supplementary table s1 and supplementary fig s1). mean windspeed for all computed trajectories between 26 28th of october was 7.47 ± 0.07 (se) m/s (ca. 26.89 km/h) (supplementary table s2 and supplementary fig. s1). hourly backward wind trajectories for the 48 h prior to the butterfly flock observation at 6 am on october 28th, 2013. trajectories were inferred by the hybrid single particle lagrangian integrated trajectory (hysplit) dispersion model60, based on the reanalysis database and computed on 200 h back trajectories for three different altitudinal layers (500 m, 1000 m and 2000 m.a.g.l.). average altitude and speed ±se along the course of the trajectories are represented for each altitudinal layer in the lower plots. source data can be obtained online using the provided code (see code availability). second, we analyzed genome wide genetic diversity from the south american samples and compared them to 126 v. cardui individuals from three continents, including 40 from north america, 56 from europe and 34 from africa (supplementary data 1 and supplementary fig. s3). phylogeographic analyses using rad sequencing showed genetic differentiation between north american and european african populations, thus allowing assignments of the intriguing south american samples. principal component analysis, as well as co ancestry analysis unambiguously showed a clustering of the south american samples within the european african population (fig. 2). this result ruled out the possibility that the migrants originated in north america. a principal component analysis (pca) using snps with less than 10% missing data per sample and pruned for ld (13 206 snps), the variances explained by the two first axes are 6.26% and 5.21%; b co ancestry matrix using fineradstructure on a dataset of 7982 rad loci. both methods delimit two populations, one in north america and the other in africa europe. butterflies collected in french guiana cluster with the afro european population. source data are provided as a source data file. third, we isolated dna from pollen grains found on the bodies of the butterflies and sequenced the plant internal transcribed region 2 (its2) of the pollen through a metabarcoding approach20. the resulting sequence reads were classified to the species level and recovered a mixture of pollen from 8 to 15 species of plants, depending on the classification method (fig. 3 and supplementary table s3). most of the identified plant species had a neotropical distribution or were poorly informative due to their widespread distribution, but a well represented plant (by number of reads) was the sahelian endemic guiera senegalensis (73 98% of the total sequence reads classified with probability of 95% or higher, depending on a bioinformatic pipeline). to a lesser extent, another sub saharan species, ziziphus spina christi was also detected (fig. 3, supplementary table s3). both species are shrubs flowering at the end of the rainy season in west africa, from august to november, and are therefore meaningful candidates as nectar sources for the dispersing butterflies. their sahelian distribution at the western african coast narrows the potential origin of the transatlantic flight. classification of the obtained its2 metabarcoding sequences processed using a denoising pipeline (see methods), and blasted on curated databases from a planits83 and b sickel et al.82 using the sintax classifier. in addition to plants present in french guiana or widely distributed (green bars), two sahelian endemic plants (yellow bars) were found among the pollen recovered from the bodies of the painted lady butterflies in south america: guiera senegalensis and ziziphus spina christi, the former being especially common. source data is available in supplementary table s3. finally, we geolocated the natal origin of the mysterious individuals sampled in south america using stable and metal isotopes. we used a dual isotope approach, analyzing hydrogen (δ2h) and strontium (87sr/86sr) isotopes in the wings of each individual18,21. we found similar isotopic signals in each individual, suggesting that these butterflies had the same natal origin (supplementary table s4). we then compared these isotope signals to existing baseline isotope maps (i.e., isoscapes)22,23,24,25,26, identifying possible regions of natal origin within the afro palearctic range (fig. 4a). to better delimit areas with highest probabilities, we overlaid isotope assignment maps with suitability maps of reproductive habitat for september and october, as recently inferred through ecological niche modeling (enm)16. the combined isotope assignments show high densities of high probability pixels in suitable regions of western europe (portugal, france, ireland and uk) and west africa (mali and coastal regions of senegal and guinea bissau) (fig. 4b), when the collected individuals would have been developing (given an approximate development time of 3 weeks and an adult lifespan of 3 4 weeks). isotopes also signaled regions in north africa, particularly in tunisia and libya, but we consider this assignment less likely given that the breeding habitat for v. cardui in this drier region only becomes suitable for the development of v. cardui later in the season15,16 (fig. 4). a natal grounds inferred by a dual approach using δ2h and 87sr/86sr isotopes. color scale depicts normalized joint probabilities by pixel. assignments show high densities of high probability pixels in america: eastern north america, venezuela, brazil; palearctic: portugal, north africa (mainly tunisia and libya), saudi arabia; afrotropics: mali, nigeria, chad and congo. b dual isotope assignments (in red, prob >0.5) overlaying with maps of highest probability breeding grounds for v. cardui inferred by ecological niche modeling (enm) for september and october (in gray, prob >0.7) in southwest palearctic and west africa. low suitability of reproductive habitat discards isotope based predictions from north africa, except a few pixels in coastal morocco. c infographic summarizing the possible natal grounds and dispersal pathway of a flock of v. cardui butterflies across the atlantic from west africa to south america, through a non stop flight of a minimum of 4200 km during 5 8 days. the total flight distance for these individuals could be as long as 7000 km if they developed in western europe. source data can be obtained online using the provided code (see code availability). butterfly illustrations by blanca martí. we assessed the feasibility of a transatlantic crossing by estimating energetic requirements and dispersal duration of v. cardui when using different flight strategies (supplementary table s6). in the absence of wind assistance, we estimate that painted ladies could travel a maximum of ~780 km without refueling, far less than the 4200 km distance across the atlantic. therefore, the painted ladies must have relied on the easterly trade winds that were present preceding the capture date. furthermore, even with wind assistance, painted ladies using an exclusively active flight strategy would travel a maximum of ~1900 km before depleting their energy reserves. therefore, painted ladies must be using an alternating strategy of active flight and minimum effort flight (i.e. flapping only to stay aloft and gliding), a behavior that is known from monarchs and other butterflies27. assuming that painted ladies use the same alternating flight strategy as monarchs (with a 15:85 proportion of active:minimum effort flight) and with the assistance of wind (average windspeed of 7.47 m/s based on trajectories starting 26 28th of october), the painted ladies we captured in french guiana could have crossed the atlantic from west africa in 5 8 days, but only if their starting fat reserves were at least as high as 13.70% of their body mass. our interdisciplinary, multi tool approach supports the hypothesis that the butterflies collected on the coast of french guiana were present as adults in sub saharan africa when accidentally caught up in a windborne, transatlantic dispersal event (fig. 4). these could have developed as larvae in western europe and thus migrated to sub saharan africa as part of their typical migratory cycle14,15,16,17. the combination of methods used in this analysis was able to uncover multiple details of the event and should be of similar utility in tracking other cases of insect ldd. while none of the five methods is definitive by itself, they complement each other and produce a coherent reconstruction of the course of the events. for example, isotope based geolocation indicates zones with high probabilities of natal origin in the eastern usa, which could be discarded using the results of genomic clustering and the presence of afrotropical pollen. on the other hand, wind trajectories, pollen identification and genomics alone would not be enough to suggest a potential european natal origin without the isotope data. beyond the methodological advance that our integrative approach represents, this finding contributes to the understanding of the dispersal capacity of insects, both physiologically and biogeographically. how can such small insects cross an ocean without refueling? and how frequent are long distance dispersal events? extreme endurance in ldd by insects is not well understood. the models show that the transatlantic crossing was only possible with the help of sustained easterly winds and with an important fraction of minimum effort flight. we estimate that the journey was completed in 5 8 days. given energetic constraints, we estimated that only the most fit butterflies, with high amounts of stored fat, and under favorable wind conditions, would have been able to complete the transatlantic journey, without the possibility to stop and feed. with lower energy reserves, they would have likely perished at the sea. the correlation of wind currents with ldd dynamics in insects is known to be strong10,19. nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent recurrent winds at a global scale may function as dispersal highways and, thus, whether windborne insect dispersal may be predictable28. every year, millions of tons of dust are transported from africa to america across the atlantic (i.e., the saharan air layer   sal) by the easterly trade winds, which has strong impacts on biogeochemical cycles and nutrient dynamics in the caribbean and the rainforest soils of the amazon basin29,30,31. the atmospheric transport of saharan aeolian material occurs year round, but has strong seasonal variations in dust concentration, altitude, and average trajectories32. in french guiana, dust deposition generally peaks in spring, but occurs all year long30. this atmospheric pattern suggest the existence of a one way dispersal highway for insects associated to the easterly trade winds. occasional dispersal of insects using the sal is more likely to take place from july to november, when insect populations explode after the rains in the semiarid areas of western africa17. this is also the time (september november) when southward migrations and extensive breeding of v. cardui occur in the region14,15,16,17,18. despite the potential of the sal as an aerial highway for v. cardui to reach the americas, stable populations of this butterfly have never been found in south america and the eastern caribbean33, suggesting niche limitations or species interaction incompatibilities. rare migrants from africa are most likely to arrive in the guianas and the eastern caribbean, where only occasional occurrences of v. cardui have been documented33,34,35. for example, among the 26 observations of v. cardui along the south american coast and the eastern caribbean islands recorded to date on inaturalist, 25 were documented between october and december. these instances align with the timeframe when v. cardui is highly present in west africa, and suggest that dispersal from africa may be more frequent than a singular exceptional event. the ldd event by painted lady butterflies documented here covered at least 4200 km across the ocean and is among the longest demonstrated to date for individual insects. with the possibility of an origin in western europe, this journey could extend to 7000 km or more   a remarkable feat for a small sized organism weighing less than a gram. a few other insects are also known to be able to endure ldd. for example, the dragonfly pantala flavescens apparently migrates annually across the indian ocean36. the monarch butterfly (danaus plexippus) also annually migrates between canada and mexico, and tagged individuals have demonstrated flights as long as 4635 km (2880 miles)37,38. recent work using light aircraft and individual radio tracking of death head’s hawkmoths (acherontia atropos) recorded a remarkable maximum ground speed of 69.7 km/hour (19.4 m/s)11. these scattered reports of individual feats of migration both in terms of distance covered and flight speed are important: collectively they indicate that trans oceanic ldd events may be sufficiently frequent to have played an underestimated role in biogeographic dispersal over time (cf. panbiogeography39,40). the biogeographic distributions and phylogenetic histories of many insects could hardly be explained without long range trans oceanic dispersal41,42,43,44,45,46. the occurrence of v. cardui in hawaii and a few historical records of the species from western australia47,48 suggest other extreme trans oceanic journeys, likewise the disjunct holarctic distribution of its closely related species vanessa atalanta49 or the established american populations of the old world tropical butterfly hypolimnas misippus50. larger insects, such as african desert locusts (schistocerca gregaria), have also been reported in the caribbean51,52,53, and westward dispersal from africa have triggered the diversification of this genus in the new world41,53. overall, and despite high intrinsic risks, ldd in insects may also entail a relevant rate of success even for the most extreme trans oceanic crossings. with global change, environmental triggers might increase ldd in insects, and excessive ldd of allochtonous, potentially invasive elements to ecosystems has been identified as one of the main threats to global biodiversity54. droughts in africa increase concentrations of subsequent transported aerial dust29, and windscape connectivity has also been predicted to change in the future and to severely impact wind dispersed species55. importantly, insects are also known to respond to environmental stress with increased movement behavior47,56, and migratory movements may increase the probability of accidental ldd. ongoing shifts in range and dispersal patterns could not only reconfigure the distribution of individual species, but also those of their interactions with host plants and pathogens56,57,58. a better understanding of how extrinsic (e.g., windscape, climate, pollution) or intrinsic (e.g. physiology, plasticity, metabolism) factors limit or favor insect dispersal will help predict their potential ecological consequences. implementing systematic assessments of ldd as standard biomonitoring routines should help to mitigate biodiversity threats stemming from global change, and we show that coastal areas are excellent sites to monitor overseas dispersal of insects. a few occasional v. cardui records have been previously reported in the northern part of the south american atlantic coast and the caribbean in october33,34,35. given that autumn coincides with southward migrations of v. cardui in the northern hemisphere (both in north/central america and in europe/africa), we hypothesized that sampling in the autumn would increase our chances to collect long distance immigrants. to this goal, coastal sampling surveys in french guiana were conducted for several days in october 2013. surveys usually took place at sunrise, starting around 6 a.m. until about 10 a.m. on october 28th, 2013, v. cardui butterflies were found with open wings standing in the sand, just a few meters from the water line. three of about ten observed butterflies were collected and stored in sealed glassine envelopes for further molecular, isotope and pollen analyses (samples 14m973, 14m974, 14m975; supplementary data 1). for phylogeographic assignments, we gathered molecular data from samples in north america, europe and africa curated at the collections of the institute of evolutionary biology (ibe, csic upf, spain), the botanical institute of barcelona (ibb, csic, spain), and the museum of comparative zoology (harvard university, usa) (supplementary data 1). samples used in this study were collected legally following local requirements. specimens from french guiana were collected before enforcement of the nagoya protocol and outside of protected areas. our study did not require ethical approval. wind trajectory analyses have been instrumental in modeling long distance movements of migratory insects59,60. we reconstructed backwards wind trajectories using the hybrid single particle lagrangian integrated trajectory (hysplit) dispersion model from noaa’s air resources laboratory61. analyses were based on the reanalysis database and computed on 200 h from the coordinates of the observation site, for every hour between the 21st to the 31st of october. trajectories were inferred for three different altitudinal layers (500 m, 1000 m and 2000 m.a.g.l.), thus covering a wide altitudinal range where migrant lepidoptera are documented to move downwind62,63,64. we used a locally installed version of hysplit and a custom r pipeline to automatically call multiple runs of the dispersion model. the script reads user defined input parameters (coordinates, timeframe in hours, starting and ending hour, years, months and days on which to run trajectories, duration and altitudes of trajectories and time zone) to generate a list of dates for which trajectories will be run using the lubridate r package65. first, the necessary meteorological files are downloaded from the reanalysis database using the splitr r package66. trajectory analyses, data transformations and plots are then performed for the required timeframes and altitudes. for each combination, the trajectories are computed using the r package opentraj67, which builds and sends the hysplit commands and parses its output into an r dataframe. this dataframe is then transformed into a “spatiallinesdataframe” object from the r package sp68,69, which is used to plot the trajectories (fig. 1, supplementary fig. s2). to generate the circular histograms, trajectory azimuths were calculated with the r packages raster70 and geosphere71 and plotted with ggplot272. both trajectory plots and circular histograms were generated at time ranges of 24 h and 48 h starting at 6 a.m. (utc   3 time zone), coinciding with the observation time in french guiana on the 28th of october of 2013. trajectories for the 48 h prior to the observation date and time are shown in fig. 1. the altitudinal profile plot was generated with the results for the trajectory starting at the moment of the v. cardui observation (i.e., october 28th, 2013 at 6 a.m.). palettes for all plots were obtained from the r package viridis73. then, to infer times and percentages of backward trajectories reaching the african coast, we obtained shapefiles of the trajectories and calculated their intersection with a vector of the african coastline using the terra r package74. lastly, we obtained windspeeds from hysplit trajectories. the mean windspeed was determined by dividing the sum of distances by the total duration of each trajectory (200 h) (supplementary table s2). because wind trajectories are expected to be variable over time, we further computed average windspeeds for each hourly segment within the trajectories, and calculated the mean of these segments across all trajectories (fig. 1 and supplementary fig. s1). analyses were conducted using r version 4.1.2, and r code is provided at the github repository https://github.com/gtlabibb/guyane75. to test a phylogeographic relationship of the french guiana specimens with their potential origins in other regions, we obtained ddrad genomic libraries for two samples (14m973 and 14m975) plus 128 individuals in three continents: north america (40 individuals), africa (34 individuals) and europe (56 individuals). we prepared ddrad libraries according to peterson et al.76, using ecori and bfai restriction enzymes and size selection of 300 bp (280 320 bp) using a pippinprep instrument and 2% agarose casettes (sage science, beverly, ma, usa). these libraries were then sequenced in 150 bp, paired end reads on illumina hiseq2500 at the harvard university bauer core facility. raw reads were processed using ipyrad v.0.9.8177 by mapping on v. cardui chromosome level genome assembly (v.2.1)78. we used standard settings, except the minimum required number of samples per locus (min_samples_locus parameter) that was set to 65 (>50% of the samples). detailed sample statistics are available in supplementary data 2 (number of raw reads, number of reads passed filters, number of mapped and unmapped reads, number of clusters and high coverage clusters per sample, estimated heterozygosity and error rates, consensus clusters in each sample and the final number of loci in the assembly). four samples were removed from the final dataset due to high proportion of missing data: 15r020, 15j795, 15o446, 15o450 thus the final dataset consisted of 126 individuals with 8337 loci containing 461,112 snps and 44.03% missing sites. we resolved v. cardui population structure using fineradstructure v.0.3.179 and pca as implemented in plink v1.9080. for fineradstructure, we exported the vcf file using finerad_input.py included in fineradstructure tools (https://github.com/edgardomortiz/fineradstructure tools), with a filter of a minimum of 2 samples in a locus, for 7984 rad loci in total. as the pca is sensitive to missing data81, we filtered out the sites with more than 10% of missing data using vcftools v0.1.1682 resulting in 27,745 sites and then pruned linked sites in a window of 50 kb, step size of 10 bp, and r2 threshold of 0.1, which resulted in 13,206 sites retained for the pca analysis. to control for the effects of missing data, we have plotted the results of the pca vs the proportion of loci present in each sample (supplementary fig. s4). the north america   europe/africa divide was not driven by the proportion in missing data, despite some outlier samples with fewer shared loci in the african european group. the analysis of pollen grains by the butterflies was performed by metabarcoding the internal transcribed region 2 (its2) according to the metabarcoding protocol of suchan et al.20. pollen was collected by vortexing the butterfly body (with wings removed) in a 2 ml tube with 50 μl in pcr grade water with 0.1% sds, centrifugation, removing the insect body, and drying the obtained solution under vacuum. the pellet was resuspended in 15 μl of phire plant direct buffer (thermo fisher scientific, waltham, ma, usa) and homogenized using zirconium beads for 1 min at 30 hz in a tissuelyser ii instrument (qiagen, hilden, germany). first pcr, using its‐s2f83 and its‐4r84 primers tailed with illumina adapter sequences, was conducted using 1 μl of the disrupted pollen sample, 25 μl of phire plant direct polymerase mix, and 0.5 μm of each primer in a 50 μl reaction volume with the following pcr program: 98 °c for 5 min, 20 cycles of denaturation at 98 °c for 40 s, annealing at 49 °c for 40 s, elongation at 72 °c for 40 s, and a final extension step at 72 °c for 5 min. each sample was processed in three replicates which were combined after the reaction, purified using 1:1 proportion of ampure xp (beckman coulter, brea, ca, usa) to the reaction volume, and eluted in 10 μl of water. the purified product of the first pcr was then used in an indexing pcr reaction consisting of 1 μl of the purified pcr product, 0.4 u of q5 hot start polymerase (new england biolabs, ipswich, ma, usa), 1× q5 buffer, and 0.5 μm of each primer in a 10 μl reaction volume with the following pcr program: 30 s initial denaturation at 98 °c, 12 cycles of denaturation at 98 °c for 10 s, combined annealing and extension at 72 °c for 30 s, and final extension at 72 °c for 5 min. again, each sample was processed in triplicates, which were pooled and purified with ampure xp as above. all primer sequences are provided in suchan et al.20. the resulting dna libraries were sequenced on illumina miseq (san diego, ca, usa) using 600 cycle miseq reagent kit v3. we merged the resulting paired end reads using pear v0.9.685, removed the primer sequences with cutadapt v3.286, and filtered reads with vsearch v2.20.087 by: expected error rate of 1, minimum length of 250 nt, without ambiguous nucleotides, and present in more than one copy. in order to account for the differences resulting from different bioinformatic treatment of the data, the merged reads were subject to three different treatments: i) clustering at 98, and ii) 99% sequence similarity, and iii) denoising using unoise algorithm88 implemented in vsearch resulting in zero radius otus (zotus), all followed with de novo chimera removal. the processed reads were classified using sintax tool89 in vsearch using two different reference databases: i) sickel et al.90 and ii) the planits database91. we then discarded sequences matching to the algae present in sickel et al.90 database and removed sequences classified as alternanthera sp., as this is an erroneous genbank entry (jx136744.1), most likely of fungal origin. the number of reads classified to each species with probabilities greater than 95% are presented in supplementary table s3. a comprehensive r script is provided at the github repository: https://github.com/gtlabibb/guyane75. stable isotopes have become effective tools to track the long distance movements of insects. as insects mature, they incorporate local isotopic signatures from their food and drink into their developing tissues. tissues that have low metabolic activity, like insect wings, preserve these natal isotopic signatures92,93. thus, the isotopic signature of a dispersing insect’s wing can be measured and compared to a spatial model of isotopic variation (i.e., an isoscape) to estimate the insect’s area of natal origin, a process termed geographic assignment94. in this study, we use hydrogen isotope values (δ2h) and strontium isotope ratios (87sr/86sr), which have been shown to be excellent complements to each other because they have different drivers of spatial isotopic variation (i.e., variation in δ²h is mainly driven by precipitation and variation in 87sr/86sr is mainly driven by bedrock geology)21. the combination of these two isotopes in a dual approach typically results in a more spatially precise estimate of natal origin18,21. all modeling was performed in r language version rx64 4.3.2 (https://www.r project.org/) and the r script used to generate the isoscapes and probability surfaces is provided at https://github.com/gtlabibb/guyane75. hydrogen isotopes fractionate during trophic interactions and physiological processes, resulting in distinct isotopic composition among species and tissues95. we generated a δ2h isoscape for butterfly wings following the procedure described in the assignr package96. the process requires a tissue specific isotope dataset of known origin individuals to develop a calibration equation between a precipitation isoscape24 and the tissue of interest. we compiled a δ2h known origin dataset of 130 monarch butterflies from 31 sites across north america, already assembled in the suborigdata object in the assignr package23,97,98, and 142 butterflies from 56 sites across europe and africa26. when plotted against the global mean annual precipitation δ2h isoscape from the assignr package, we obtained the following calibration equation: wing δ2h = 0.66 × precipitation δ2h   49.34 ‰ (r2 = 0.55). we calibrated the butterfly wing δ2h isoscape using the calraster function in the assignr package (supplementary fig. s4). unlike δ2h, 87sr/86sr do not fractionate across trophic levels, and the 87sr/86sr of butterfly wings are similar to the bioavailable 87sr/86sr of their natal environment99. thus, we used the global bioavailable 87sr/86sr isoscape from bataille et al.22 (supplementary fig. s4) to estimate the natal origin of the v. cardui samples based on their 87sr/86sr ratios. this isoscape was modeled by coupling known origin bioavailable 87sr/86sr data with spatial biogeoenvironmental covariates within a random forest regression framework to predict the spatial variation in 87sr/86sr from local plants, soils, and animals22. sample preparation and hydrogen isotope analysis were conducted at isoforensics, inc. in salt lake city, utah, usa. before measuring the δ²h values of the wings of each of the three v. cardui butterflies, we cleaned the wings in a 2:1 chloroform:methanol solution to remove lipids, dust, and contaminates from the wings that could impact the δ²h signature of the wing samples. for each individual, we sampled a piece of the cleaned wings in the same lower distal portion of the wing. the δ2h value of the non exchangeable hydrogen of butterfly wing was determined using the comparative analysis approach described by100 based on two calibrated, powdered keratin (horn) hydrogen isotope reference materials (ds: −174.1 ± 3.4‰, orx: −35.4 ± 4.1‰)97. samples and standards were equilibrated with laboratory air for a minimum of 3 days prior to weighing. samples and standards were then weighed into silver capsules (100 ± 10 μg) and dried under vacuum for a minimum of 5 days prior to isotope analysis. we performed hydrogen isotopic measurements on h2 gas derived from high temperature (1400 °c) flash pyrolysis of wing samples and keratin standards. resultant separated h2 was analyzed on an interfaced thermo finnigan mat 253 isotope ratio mass spectrometer with a thermo high temperature conversion elemental analyzer (tc/ea; bremen, germany) attached via a conflo iv interface (thermo finnigan, bremen, germany). our analysis assumes that the fraction of exchangeable h atoms is similar between the keratin standards and chitin wing samples (i.e., ~10%), and that the non matrix matched standards (keratin vs chitin) and differences in preparation (powdered standards vs cut samples) do not bias the analysis. all δ2h values are reported to the international scale vsmow slap. measurement of the two keratin laboratory reference materials corrected for linear instrumental drift were both accurate and precise, with typical within run measurement error (1 sd < 2‰). an additional keratin standard, pow, was used as a quality check. the measured values for pow (−102.2 ± 1.26‰, n = 4) were within the reported value and uncertainty (δ2h = −101.1 ± 3.0‰), thus verifying this approach. analytical precision of these measurements is based on the reproducibility of pow, and is better than ±2‰. a single wing from each of the three v. cardui butterflies was used to measure 87sr/86sr in the wing. to remove surficial contaminants, wing samples were dry cleaned with pressurized nitrogen gas for 10 min at about 10 psi. samples were then digested in concentrated nitric acid (16 m; distilled tracemetal™ grade; fisher chemical, canada) for 15 min at 250 °c using microwave digestion (anton paar multiwave 7000, graz, austria). after digestion, the vials were limpid suggesting complete digestion. after drying, the sample was treated with 1 ml of 16 m hno3 and then transferred to a 7 ml savillex ptfe vial. a 50 μl aliquot of the resulting solution was then analyzed for sr concentration using icp ms (agilent 8800 triple quadrupole mass spectrometer) at the department of earth and environmental sciences, university of ottawa. single element certified standards (scp science, montreal, canada) were prepared as calibration standards. subsequently, the remaining sample was dried down and re dissolved in 1 ml of 6 m hno3. a 100 μl microcolumn loaded with 100 150 μm sr spec resintm (eichrom technologies, llc) was used for the separation of sr. the matrix was rinsed with 6 m hno3, and sr was collected with 0.05 m hno3, dried, and re dissolved in 200 μl 2% v/v hno3 for 87sr/86sr analysis. the 87sr/86sr analysis was conducted using a nu plasma ii high resolution mc icp ms (nu instruments) coupled to a desolvating nebulizer (aridus iitm, cetac technologies) at the pacific centre for isotopic and geochemical research, university of british columbia. strontium isotope compositions are reported as 87sr/86sr and normalized for instrumental mass bias using 86sr/88sr of 0.1194. isobaric interferences were corrected by measuring 83kr and 85rb. the means of 5 ppb nist srm987 and 1.4 ppb nist srm987 were 0.71025 ± 0.00009 (1 sd, n = 138) and 0.71019 ± 0.00011 (n = 48), respectively. to match the samples, a chitin internal standard, 5 ppb alfa aesar chitin (0.713959 ± 0.00009, n = 3), was also used. we used the continuous surface probability framework and the pdraster function from the assignr package96 to estimate the most likely locations of origin of each individual using single (δ2h or 87sr/86sr) and dual (δ2h and 87sr/86sr) isotope data. as the isotope signals from the different individuals are nearly identical, we assumed they were from the same region of natal origin and collated the probability map of each individual using the jointp function in the assignr package96. given the exceptionally long dispersal event across the atlantic by v. cardui butterflies, we investigated the energy requirements of different flight strategies, including (1) active flight in the absence of wind assistance, (2) active flight in the presence of wind assistance, and (3) an alternating strategy of active and “minimal energy” flight phases. during active flight, painted ladies can achieve airspeeds of 6 m/s in the absence of wind101. we estimated an average mass of 150 mg for v. cardui, based on a dataset of lab reared, ten day old butterflies (n = 37). the maximum body fat ratio of v. cardui is unknown, but in monarch butterflies constitutes approximately 23% of the body mass. applying a similar ratio to v. cardui leads to a maximum body fat content of 34.5 mg. the rate of fat consumption depends on the metabolic rate, which, in turn, depends on the butterfly’s temperature. monarch butterflies have resting metabolic rates of 0.4 ml·o2·g−1·h−1 at 20 °c and 0.6 ml·o2·g−1·h−1 at 30 °c27. metabolic rates during active flight substantially exceed resting metabolic rates, ranging from 25 times higher at 32 °c102 to 31 times higher at 22 °c103 in monarchs. using conversion factors of 4.7 cal·ml of o2 and 0.11 mg of fat per calorie27, we estimated fat consumption rates during active flight (0.96 mg to 1.16 mg per hour). a summary of all relevant variables is provided in supplementary table s5 of the supplementary material. we used these parameter values to estimate the fat consumption in a scenario of non stop continuous flight across the atlantic ocean (supplementary table s6). under all tested parameter options, non stop continuous flight in the absence of wind requires more energy than the maximum fat content (supplementary table s6). next, we considered a scenario where the easterly trade winds preceding the capture date assisted the v. cardui individuals across the atlantic. considering the average windspeed of trajectories preceding the observation date ranged from 4.71 m/s to 8.79 m/s, and assuming a precise downwind orientation, we calculated a groundspeed during active flight within the range of 10.71 m/s to 14.79 m/s. we used the same parameter values as the previous scenario to estimate the fat consumption of non stop continuous flight across the atlantic ocean with wind assistance at different speeds. although less energy was needed than in the first scenario, non stop continuous flight with wind assistance still requires more energy than is provided by the assumed maximum fat content (supplementary table s6). therefore, it is very unlikely that the dispersing v. cardui maintained consistent active flight throughout their journey. instead, they likely also engaged in “minimum effort” flight, wherein the butterfly generates the minimum lift necessary to remain airborne, preserving their energy. monarchs have been observed combining active and soaring flight in a proportion of 15 85%, respectively104. we used this proportion to estimate the average metabolic rate for the whole flight, therefore modeling an alternating strategy of minimum effort and active flight phases: 0.15*(active metabolic rate, amr) + 0.85*(resting metabolic rate, rmr). this estimation assumes the rmr for the minimum effort phase, but a slightly higher metabolic rate may be more plausible because of likely minimal flapping to maintain height. in our model, we estimate that a rate five times higher than the rmr would render the transatlantic crossing energetically unfeasible. for phases of minimum effort flight, the butterfly’s contribution to horizontal speed was assumed to be negligible. consequently, the groundspeed during this phase is assumed to be equal to the average windspeed. to estimate the time required for the transatlantic crossing, we maintained the proportions of active and minimal effort flight (15% and 85%) and computed the duration by dividing the minimum distance of the crossing (4200 km) by the weighted mean of the active flight speed and the minimum effort flight speed. under this scenario, the v. cardui individuals could have completed the transatlantic crossing with an initial fat content as low as 13.70%. we estimate that the time required to complete the transatlantic crossing ranged between approximately 5 8 days. further information on research design is available in the nature portfolio reporting summary linked to this article. demultiplexed and adapter trimmed rad sequencing reads have been deposited in the european nucleotide archive project prjeb57763. raw metabarcoding sequences have been deposited in the european nucleotide archive project prjeb57731. source data for figs. 1 and 4 can be obtained using the provided code (see code availability). source data for fig. 2 are provided as a source data file. source data for fig. 3 is available in supplementary table s3. source data are provided with this paper. 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(proquest dissertations & theses global, 2005). gibo, d. l. & mccurdy, j. a. lipid accumulation by migrating monarch butterflies (danaus plexippus l.). can. j. zool. 71, 76 82 (1993). article cas google scholar download references we are grateful to our colleagues who provided observational data or contributed samples used in this study, including b. acosta, a. andersen, d. benyamini, c. brevignon, s. cuvelier, l. dapporto, v. dincă, j y gallard, m. gascoigne pees, e. goudegnon, j. hernández roldán, j.c. hinojosa, r. izquierdo, m. janda, e. karolinskiy, m. khaldi, r. khellaf, m. kiki, m. lópez munguira, a. marsiñach, y. monasterio, f. mondaca, f. páramo, e. pfeiler, c. pitteloud, a. shapiro, n. shapoval, m. trujano, s. viader and r. vodă. we thank the centre d’étude de la biodiversité amazonienne (ceba, french guiana) for supporting this research. we thank r. lópez mañas for providing useful code for the wind trajectory analyses. this work was funded by the national geographic society (grant ww1 300r 18), by the british ecological society (grant lrb16/1015), by the pric grants of the fundació barcelona zoo, by the grant linka20399 from the csic ilink program, by the grant 2021 sgr 01334 from the departament de recerca i universitats (generalitat de catalunya), and by the grant pid2020 117739ga i00 mcin/aei/10.13039/501100011033 to g.t.; by grant nfre 2018 00738 of the new frontiers in research fund (government of canada) to c.p.b. and g.t.; by grant fpu22/02358 from the spanish ministry of science, innovation and universities to e.t. d; and by project pid2022 139689nb i00 (mcin/aei/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by erdf, eu) and by grant 2021 sgr  00420 from the departament de recerca i universitats (generalitat de catalunya) to r.v. g.t. and n.e.p. also acknowledge the putnam expeditionary fund from the museum of comparative zoology (mcz, harvard university). these authors contributed equally: tomasz suchan, clément p. bataille, gerard talavera. w. szafer institute of botany, polish academy of sciences, kraków, poland tomasz suchan department of earth and environmental sciences, university of ottawa, ottawa, on, k1n 6n5, canada clément p. bataille department of biology, university of ottawa, ottawa, on, k1n 6n5, canada megan s. reich institut botànic de barcelona (ibb), csic cmcnb, barcelona, 08038, catalonia, spain eric toro delgado & gerard talavera institut de biologia evolutiva (csic univ. pompeu fabra), barcelona, 08003, catalonia, spain eric toro delgado & roger vila department of organismic and evolutionary biology and museum of comparative zoology, harvard university, cambridge, ma, 02138, usa naomi e. pierce & gerard talavera you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar you can also search for this author in pubmed google scholar conceptualization: t.s., c.p.b., r.v., n.e.p., g.t.; field sampling: r.v., g.t.; data collection: t.s., c.p.b., m.s.r., g.t.; data analysis: t.s., c.p.b., m.s.r., e.t d., g.t.; writing   original draft: t.s., c.p.b., g.t.; writing   review and editing: t.s., c.p.b., m.s.r., e.t d., r.v., n.e.p., g.t.; funding: t.s., c.p.b., r.v., n.e.p., g.t. correspondence to gerard talavera. the authors declare no competing interests. nature communications thanks alistair drake, zdenek faltynek fric and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. a peer review file is available. publisher’s note springer nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. open access this article is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the creative commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. the images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s creative commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. if material is not included in the article’s creative commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. to view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. reprints and permissions suchan, t., bataille, c.p., reich, m.s. et al. a trans oceanic flight of over 4,200 km by painted lady butterflies. nat commun 15, 5205 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467 024 49079 2 download citation received: 17 july 2023 accepted: 20 may 2024 published: 25 june 2024 doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467 024 49079 2 anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. provided by the springer nature sharedit content sharing initiative collection nature communications (nat commun) issn 2041 1723 (online) © 2025 springer nature limited sign up for the nature briefing newsletter   what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

recent and archived work by monique brouillette for the new york times researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. by monique brouillette

the david balfour park trail is now closed on both side of yellow creek to the south of the bridge below summerhill gardens to allow the toronto and region conservation authority to get on with reconstruction of the creek banks which were badly eroded by runoff from last months torrential rainstorm. an interesting article from the ny times: scientists find first evidence that butterflies crossed an ocean   researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/science/butterflies ocean migration.html the summer solstice happens at 4:51 p.m. et, according to the national weather service: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx s1 5013295/summer solstice 2024 early there was a big thunderstorm in the early morning hours. i heard thunder and saw lightning flashes at about 3:15 am et which promoted me to furl and stow the umbrella on the upper terrace in case of high winds. in the afternoon, on my walk along the david balfour park trail and the park drive reservation trail, i noticed signs on extensive flooding along yellow creek, including debris clogging the culvert leading to the underground portion of the creek south of the cpr viaduct and the grate at the entrance to the culvert at the foot of milkmen’s road. the storm produced a real gully washer of a flood ! a very foggy morning with no breeze. lake very calm. we drove to the visitor centre and took the shuttle to the tip where we saw cormorants flying overhead and gulls and terns on the beach. no pelicans today. then a walk along west beach where we saw a northern crescent and a soldier fly. then back to the cottage for lunch. back out to northwest beach at 3:30 pm in brilliant sunshine with calm air. i encountered a red spotted admiral puddling in the north parking lot of the marsh boardwalk trail. i walked south along the seasonal footpath south of the parking lot serving northwest baech to the walkout to the portion of the shore called “the dunes”. blue dasher at entrance to the seasonal footpath that leads south from the parking lot for northwest beach. lots of azures on the false indigo bush and an 8 spotted moth as well. lots of dragonflies: eatsern pondhawk, blue dashers, and one big beautiful but dragonfly, caramel with brown spotted wings that turned out to be a painted skimmer (libellula semifasciata). i also saw a big green dragonfly that i think was a common green darner. lots of butterflies: azures, satyrs, and a question mark. more eastern pricklypear cactuses. then back north through the savanna close to the beach where i saw a few dragonflies with black bodies and black saddlebags flying around. at 5 pm, i passed a tree filled with butterflies and bugs, probably a hopwood. viceroy, question mark, red admiral and red spotted admiral. and eastern pondhawks and eastern giant swallowtails. after supper, we drove back to the marsh boardwalk trail for a final circuit. no swans or beavers this time. instead, we saw a female wood duck. rain overnight. strong winds from the south created waves with whitecaps that crashed against the rock retaining wall noisily and splashed water onto the porch. the rain let up around 9am and the skies gradually lightened and the porch dried off. we drove to the delaurier homestead at 11 am and walked the 1 km trail around the homestead. best sighting of the trip was the northern flicker on a post at the exit from the parking lot. fish and onion rings for lunch from ship ahoy. perch and smelts. then back to the park at 1:30 pm where we parked the car at northwest beach and walked south along the seasonal footpath that parallels the centennial trail. lots of eastern giant swallowtails and dragonflies, including eastern pondhawks and a common whitetail. an evening walk on the marsh boardwalk trail at 7 pm. we saw beavers swimming and swans swimming. we drove to the visitor centre where we parked and boarded the shuttle that conveys visitors to the tip trail which we walked along to reach the southernmost tip of the point where we saw lots of shore birds: 20 (or more) american white swans and many more gulls on the shore and in the water and a few cormorants flying west. we walked north along the beach on the east side of the point and encountered a eastern tiger butterfly that was being buffeted by the light easterly breeze as it was “puddling” on the beach. on the seasonal footpath leading back to the visitors centre, we recorded the call of a carolina wren. we drove back to the cottage for lunch after which we went back to the centennial trail leading south from northwest beach to look for more butterflies and dragonflies. after dinner, we drove to the marsh boardwalk and saw a beaver slipping into the water as we approached on the boardwalk. lots of red winged blackbirds, too. morning: northwest beach: eastern giant swallowtail and summer azure. barn swallows perching on the roof of the pavilion and american white pelicans wheeling high overhead, wild turkey climbing the bank on the north side of the access road. then off to the visitor centre where we followed the shuster trail to the eastern shore. high water levels prevented us from walking along the shore. next we walked along the woodland nature trail behind the visitor centre where we saw more “hoary puccoon” and eastern prickly pear cactus. afternoon: we parked in the parking lot at the marsh boardwalk and walked south along the “seasonal footpath” that parallels the centennial trail south of northwest beach. the trail passes first through savanna and then woodland. the savanna portion featured lots of butterflies and dragonflies. the woodland portion was less interesting so we walked back along the centennial trail and saw a few butterflies. evening: we walked along the marsh boardwalk at 8:00 pm. two swans and a beaver swimming on the east side. a beaver under the boardwalk on the west side. clear skies but fresh air and a breeze from the north, so walking on the centennial trail was very comfortable. high temperature was 20c. i walked from 992 point pelee drive to marsh trail, around the trail and back: 10.5 km (14,000 steps). at northwest beach, an eastern giant swallowtail and two, possibly 3, eastern tiger swallowtails at the south end. also, a red admiral. at the north end, an eastern tiger swallowtails and a hobomok skipper. northwest beach is at the south end of the lakeshore savannah. at marsh trail, an azure feeding on the flower of a white clover. also a damselfly on the boardwalk. turtles and two swans. at the loop at the head of the centennial trail near the park entrance, an anglewing. along point pelee drive on the trip back, an eastern tiger swallowtail. lots of damselflies and marsh flies along the portion of the centennial trail in the shaded woodland. also, some small common eastern bumble bees. lots of robins, red winged blackbirds and starlings. also, eastern prickly pear cactus and hoary puccoon. a pair of cardinals on the lawn beside the pricefield road playground. several european common blue butterflies feeding on yellow flowers blooming on the north side of the lane to the north of mathersfield drive. an eastern tiger swallowtail in the trees behind the roxborough parkette where i also saw four grosbeaks and a red tailed hawk. milkweed growing alongside the park drive reservation trail. a dragonfly flying high over my head along the rosedale valley road. milkweed in the community garden opposite 130 rosedale valley road. milkweed growing rainy and windy today with a high of just 45f. no observations. about help forum jobs our blog community guidelines terms of use privacy inaturalist australia is the product of a membership agreement between the inaturalist network and the atlas of living australia and csiro. the atlas of living australia is made possible by contributions from its partners. it is funded by the australian government’s national collaborative infrastructure strategy and is hosted by csiro. it is the australian node of gbif. the atlas of living australia acknowledges australia’s traditional owners and pays respect to the past and present elders of the nation’s aboriginal and torres strait islander communities. we honour and celebrate the spiritual, cultural and customary connections of traditional owners to country and the biodiversity that forms part of that country.

hannah and i went to cape may nj for a few days as a “birthday trip” to celebrate my upcoming 70th birthday. the plan was to see the monarchs on the dunes as they got ready for their big migration and to enjoy the victorian architecture. spending time with hannah was the best part of the trip! . 2022 compared with 2024. the sparsity of monarchs now is due to loss of habitat and climate change, but also due to the direction of the wind. if it was blowing west we would see more butterflies, but it blew east. “like orange clouds” said our trolley car historic tour guide when i mentioned that we came here, in part, for the monarchs. she was an older lady (older than me!) and grew up in cape may. she remembered how abundant the butterflies were every fall and how they flew around in groups that brought to mind an “orange cloud”. what a fab image. and sad too… but hannah and i did see some monarchs on both the ocean and bay beaches and were satisfied. the first day we visited the monarch festival. bought new hats, watched a tagging demo and dug the vibe of other butterfly lovers. . . known as the “queen of the seaside resorts” for its quaint victorian cottages and pristine beaches, cape may is the oldest seaside resort in the country, and in 1976, the entire city was declared a national historic landmark. possessing one of the country’s largest collections of 19th century seaside wood framed buildings, the historic district features a variety of styles of victorian architecture. our articulate and clear tour guide explained cape may’s history and architecture and how and why it has survived and thrives to this day. this narrated tour traveled through portions of cape may’s historic district. we learned about the architecture and history of the area . i love cape may! . migration update: october 7th (from the cape may monarchs facebook page): monarch numbers have been building from late this afternoon, into this evening with hundreds moving down the coast and through cape may point! anna, one of our monarch field naturalists, counted over 400 in a 30min period while conducting our point count around 3pm. additionally, over at the avalon seawatch, tom reed recorded 30 50 per minute this evening heading south toward cape may. after several weeks of winds from the east we are finally seeing some northwest winds today and are expecting more throughout the week. it will be northwest again tomorrow, which should push more numbers of monarchs into cape may. rusty tipped page aka siproeta epaphus, or brown siproeta, is a new world butterfly that lives all year in tropical habitats. it has large wings, that are black in the inner portion of the top surface and brown throughout the underside. both surfaces have a bold white transverse stripe continuing across both wings. found throughout central america, where it is one of the most common butterflies, its range extends from southern north america to central south america. the range includes (though may not be limited to) south texas and rarely southern new mexico south through both eastern and western mexico to the guyanas, brazil, bolivia and peru. butterfly seeking in the north country! visited the butterfly house at paul smith v.i.c. and saw only a few local species. apparently i missed out on the white admiral’s season. the great spangled fritillary at john dillon park after our pontoon boat ride on grampus lake. the american lady at the butterfly house and the red admiral on the roadside near our cabin. the wildflowers were abundant and gorgeous! . researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. the painted lady, or the species vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in south america. yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. judging by their condition, the bleary eyed dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight. the insect is a champion of long distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the sahara on a trek from europe to southern africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. could they also have made the 2,600 mile journey across the atlantic ocean without any place to stop and refuel? dr. talavera wanted to find out. following the long range movements of insects is challenging. tools like radio tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen scientist observations to piece together travel patterns. a crucial clue to cracking the mystery of the stranded butterflies: pollen clinging to the butterflies in french guiana matched flowering shrubs in west african countries. these shrubs bloom from august to november, which matches the timeline of the butterflies’ arrival. in addition to studying the pollen, the researchers sequenced the butterflies’ genomes to trace their lineage and found they had european african roots. this ruled out the possibility that they had flown over land from north america. it’s likely they were on their typical route through africa when they were swept off course by a strong wind. once over the ocean, the butterflies kept flying until they reached the shore. full article by monique brouillette here. eastern tiger swallowtail in flight above the game. photo by the daughter of the father. (btw, the mets won!) eastern tiger swallowtail in the rose garden! first sighting of a plain tiger from africa (aka african queen!), king swallowtail from central and south america, and two female common mormons from southeast asia. and how about that malachite’s camoflauge abilities? . . . . an external view of the vivarium entrance from across the gilder center atrium.

agree & join linkedin by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. assistant professor in cs at mcgill, co founder of climate change ai, mit tech review "35 innovators under 35" thrilled to give a keynote at this year's entomological society of canada conference on our work using ai to study insects. my younger self would have been very excited :) https://lnkd.in/gkee45tc ml scientist, mila | visiting researcher, vector institute that is a very cool picture, david! to view or add a comment, sign in syngenta fellow in computer vision & ai this week i helped organise and presented at 'ai in entomology' special interest group meeting organised by the royal entomological society. the event was on my home turf hosted by syngenta group at jealott's hill international research station. a wide range of talks utilising ai in entomological research with focus on biodiversity monitoring and camera systems, insect tracking to using llms. the pace of change in ai has enabled many new possibilities to study different aspects of insect physiology and behaviour in novel ways. some key takeaways : 1. ai is inspired by biology 2. data is king, modes are ephemeral 3. avoid algorithmic complexity (if you can!) 4. emulate biological intelligence (but don't blindly copy it) 5. emergent behaviour is important (for autonomous operation) thanks to my co convenors mark o'neill and james gilbert. to view or add a comment, sign in 3,468 followers jessica castellanos labarcena, an arrell scholar and phd candidate, is exploring biodiversity patterns in parasitoid wasps, a group vital to agricultural and ecological balance. using genetic data, her research challenges long standing assumptions about species diversity and offers new insights into how environmental factors shape genetic variation. read more: https://lnkd.in/gumzcrn4 to view or add a comment, sign in 14,671 followers using genomic data from more than 9,500 tree species, biologists have mapped the evolutionary relationships between flowering plants. #floweringplants #treeoflife #treecare #savatree https://hubs.ly/q02vslfh0 to view or add a comment, sign in agriculture & entomologist |founder of vertibloom| data analyst (python & excel) | researcher & published writer | reviewer at ijris | media & startup coordinator | volunteer | athlete (cricket & badminton) current trends in forensic entomology microbial forensics: exploring microbial communities for more precise time of death estimates. environmental dna (edna): non invasive insect species detection from soil and water samples. ai and machine learning:(mine favorite one:⁠ ⁠) enhancing pmi estimations through advanced data analysis. urban forensics: studying urban insect communities for forensic applications. ethical standards: developing guidelines for ethical insect evidence use. to view or add a comment, sign in entrepreneurial ceo entomologist and "ai generalist": passionate about entomology and creative custom ai solutions for making life more fun, interesting and productive. reach out if you need an ai workflow! 🤖 🐝 curious about ai in entomology? 🦋 it's not just algorithms and data sets. there will be complexities and a steep learning curve. each species presents its own set of challenges, so embrace flexibility. 💡 leverage advanced modeling to understand insect behavior. 🔍 proactive approaches help combat pests and optimize ecosystems. 🌿 use ai tools to enhance biodiversity research and conservation efforts. it's not about avoiding the insect world, it's about finding innovative ways to thrive within it. 🌱🦋 so, are you ready to explore the world of ai and entomology? #entomologyai #innovativescience #biodiversityconservation to view or add a comment, sign in biology tutor| online tutor| prolife advocate| motivational speaker| graphic designer yes or no? have you heard of 'de extinction'? it implies bringing back extinct organisms. according to researches and with genetic engineering, extinct species can be revived. but should they? imagine woolly mammoths or dinosaurs roaming the earth again! would it disrupt the delicate balance of our ecosystem? some ethical dilemma are: pros: 1. conservation and education opportunities 2. potential to restore lost biodiversity 3. scientific discoveries and advancements cons: 1. unknown long term consequences on ecosystems 2. resource allocation and funding priorities 3. welfare and well being of resurrected species now, share your thoughts! would you want to see extinct species brought back to life? do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? let's explore the science and ethics together! #favoriteteacher #teacherscholastica #biologist #educationist #biology #deextinction #conservation #ethics #geneticengineering #extinctspecies #ecosystembalance #yes #no #science #discoveries #scholarsbiologylab #underthemicroscope to view or add a comment, sign in 12,972 followers university of california riverside (ucr) scientists have introduced a new termite control strategy using pinene to lure termites into insecticide treated areas, achieving over 95 percent effectiveness, study's show by ucr entomologist dong hwan choe. https://lnkd.in/dimr7hhp to view or add a comment, sign in 818 followers 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗣𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗻 🐝 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 👉 https://lnkd.in/gtsvaq7c in a recent groundbreaking discovery, researchers identified a new species of parasitoid wasp that uniquely infects adult drosophila flies. this finding, reported in the eastern united states, marks the first instance of a parasitoid targeting adult stages of any fly species. the wasp, belonging to the genus syntretus, lays its eggs inside living adult flies, where the larvae subsequently develop, feeding off their hosts. typically, parasitoid wasps attack larval or pupal stages, making this adaptation particularly intriguing. this novel interaction adds a significant chapter to the study of parasitic relationships and host parasite evolution, highlighting the complex and dynamic nature of ecological interactions. the discovery not only expands our understanding of parasitoid wasp behavior but also opens new avenues for research into parasitoid host dynamics 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲   moore, l. d., amuwa, t. c., shaw, s. r., & ballinger, m. j. (2024). drosophila are hosts to the first described parasitoid wasp of adult flies. nature. https://lnkd.in/dhqqbdgu #pestcontrol #parasitoidwasp #fruitflies #biologicalcontrol #entomology #agriculture #innovationinpestcontrol #syntretusperlmani #researchdiscovery #ecofriendlysolutions #pestmanagement #environmentalscience #natureinbalance #hostparasiteinteractions to view or add a comment, sign in 1,811 followers read about bridget barker's valley fever research in science magazine. her research focuses on fungal pathogenesis, genomics, and ecology of coccidioides, the fungi responsible for valley fever. using molecular techniques, her team aims to improve understanding of coccidioides' ecological niche in soil and predict its presence. https://buff.ly/40lizo1 #nauresearch #valleyfever #coccidioides #fungalresearch to view or add a comment, sign in business growth strategist, deep thinker & finder of innovation gold (rasey.com) researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight. in 2018, he developed a way to use a common genetic sequencing tool to analyze pollen dna. pollen grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. dr. talavera used a method called dna metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ dna and determine which plant they came from. later, the dna could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path. in a paper published tuesday in the journal nature communications, dr. talavera and his team describe a crucial clue to cracking the mystery of the stranded butterflies: pollen clinging to the butterflies in french guiana matched flowering shrubs in west african countries. these shrubs bloom from august to november, which matches the timeline of the butterflies’ arrival. that suggested the butterflies had crossed the atlantic. the idea was tantalizing. but dr. talavera and his team were careful not to jump to conclusions. in addition to studying the pollen, the researchers sequenced the butterflies’ genomes to trace their lineage and found they had european african roots. this ruled out the possibility that they had flown over land from north america. then, they used an insect tracking tool called isotope tracing to confirm that the butterflies’ natal origins were in western europe, north africa and west africa. #butterfly #pollen #dna #insecttracking #isotopetracing #genomes #lineage #science https://lnkd.in/etrhjs8s to view or add a comment, sign in 3,527 followers create your free account or sign in to continue your search or by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. new to linkedin? join now or new to linkedin? join now by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. linkedin never miss a beat on the app don’t have the app? get it in the microsoft store.
supported by trilobites researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. by monique brouillette early one morning in late october 2013, gerard talavera, an entomologist, saw something highly unusual   a flock of painted lady butterflies stranded on a beach in french guiana. the painted lady, or the species vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in south america. yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. judging by their condition, the bleary eyed dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight. the insect is a champion of long distance travel, routinely crisscrossing the sahara on a trek from europe to sub saharan africa, covering up to 9,000 miles. could they also have made the 2,600 mile journey across the atlantic ocean without any place to stop and refuel? dr. talavera wanted to find out. following the long range movements of insects is challenging. tools like radio tracking devices are too large for insects’ small and delicate frames, and radar allows for monitoring only of specific locations. scientists have had to rely on educated guesses and citizen scientist observations to piece together travel patterns. “we see butterflies that appear and disappear, but we are not proving the links directly, we are just making assumptions,” dr. talavera said. in 2018, he developed a way to use a common genetic sequencing tool to analyze pollen dna. pollen grains stick to pollinating insects like butterflies when they are feeding on nectar from flowers. dr. talavera used a method called dna metabarcoding to sequence the pollens’ dna and determine which plant they came from. later, the dna could be traced to geographical flora to chart the insect’s path.

. researchers discovered painted ladies on a south american beach and then built a case that they started their journey in europe or africa. the painted lady, or the species vanessa cardui, is one of the world’s most widespread butterflies, but it isn’t found in south america. yet there they were, lying in the sand of the continent’s eastern shores, their wings tattered and riddled with holes. judging by their condition, the bleary eyed dr. talavera, who works at the institut botànic de barcelona in spain, guessed they were recovering from a long flight.