All flights lead to the Butterfly Summit.

Road trips, too.

Butterfly guru Arthur Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology,  will speak on "Are Butterflies Heralds of the Insect Apocalypse?" at the third annual Butterfly Summit, an all-day event that begins 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 27 at Annie's Annuals and Perennials, 740 Market Ave., Richmond.

It's free and family friendly and co-sponsored by the Pollinator Posse, a Bay Area-based volunteer group co-founded by Tora Rocha and Terry Smith.

Shapiro, a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1972, will address the summit at 11 a.m. He recently addressed a monarch butterfly summit at UC Davis at which he declared that "California monarchs are on life support." (See his presentation.)

Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends in central California since 1972; his is the largest and oldest such dataset in North America. Shapiro, author of the book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Valley Regions, maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu.

Rocha lists the schedule as follows:

10 a.m.: "Bring the kids to see our caterpillars and adult butterflies, talk with our experts and share your experiences."

11 a.m.: Where have all the insects gone? Art Shapiro of UC Davis will share his thoughts on the insect apocalypse happening around the globe and discuss his research finds.

1 p.m.: Angela Laws, monarch ecologist from Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Mia Monroe, volunteer, will discuss how gardening practices can help the plight of the California monarchs

All day: Information tables.

Pollinator Posse: Tara Rocha and Terry Smith, along with Jackie Salas, horticulturist at Children's Fairyland, Oakland, will be available for questions.

Andy Liu:Liu, a landscape architect and garden designer specializing in butterfly habitat,  will explain why his neighborhood is alive with Swallowtails, Gulf Fritillaries and many other winged wonders.   

Tim Wong: Wong, an aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, is known as known as the "Pipevine Swallowtail Whisperer."

Andrea Hurd: Hurd, with the Mariposa Garden Design, will share her methods for designing meadows for butterflies. She specializes in songbird, butterfly, and pollinator habitat gardens using California native and pollinator-friendly plants.

Robin North: North, a garden designer specializing in pollinator and songbird habitat gardens in the North Bay, will share ideas for designing Sonoma County habitat gardens. 

Suzanne Clarke:  Clarke, a Sonoma County Master Gardener and "Butterfly Whisperer," will show how to rear caterpillars at her table and discuss the benefits of gardening for habitat.

Alameda County Master Gardeners:  They will be on hand to show how to garden for native pollinators.

Rocha and Smith formed the Pollinator Posse (see their Facebook page) in Oakland in 2013 to create pollinator-friendly landscaping in urban settings and to foster appreciation of local ecosystems through outreach, education and direct action. Rocha, a retired Oakland parks supervisor, said that eco-friendly landscape techniques are at the heart of their work. "We teach respect for the creatures which keep Oakland– and the world–blooming."

"We envision a day when life-enhancing, thought-inspiring green spaces will grace every corner of the city and the world beyond," she said.

See the metamorphosis of a monarch below: from egg to caterpillar to pupa (chrysalis) to adult. 

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough," wrote the late poet Rabindranath Targoe (1861-1941) of Bengali, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

There may not be "time enough" for some species that are rapidly declining.

What's going on? 

Butterfly guru Arthur Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology,  will speak on butterflies and the insect apocalypse at the third annual Butterfly Summit, an all-day event that begins 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 27 at Annie's Annuals and Perennials, 740 Market Ave., Richmond. Free and family friendly, it's co-sponsored by the Pollinator Posse, a Bay Area-based volunteer group co-founded by Tora Rocha and Terry Smith.

Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on a transect across central California since 1972 and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu. A member of the UC Davis faculty since 1971 and author of the book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Valley Regions, he has studied a total of 163 species in his transect. His is the largest and oldest such dataset in North America.

Shapiro,  who will address the summit at 11 a.m., is frequently quoted in the regional, national and international news media, including BBC, New York Times and the Washington Post. He was recently interviewed on the National Public Radio Program, Insight with Beth Ruyak, on "Butterflies as Heralds of the Apocalypse." He recently addressed a monarch butterfly summit at UC Davis at which he declared that "California monarchs are on life support." (See his presentation.)

Rocha lists the schedule as follows:

10 a.m.: Bring the kids to see our caterpillars and adult butterflies, talk with our experts and share your experiences.

11 a.m.: Where have all the insects gone? Art Shapiro of UC Davis will share his thoughts on the insect apocalypse happening around the globe and will discuss the state of insects and butterflies in Northern California.

1 p.m.: Angela Laws, monarch ecologist from Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Mia Monroe, volunteer, will discuss how your gardening practices can help the plight of the California monarchs

All day: Stop by the regional information tables to learn about what you can do to help re-establish butterfly populations.

Pollinator Posse: Tara Rocha and Terry Smith, along with Jackie Salas, horticulturist at Children's Fairyland, Oakland, will be available for questions.

Andy Liu: A landscape architect and garden designer specializing in butterfly habitat, Liu will explain why his neighborhood is alive with Swallowtails, Gulf Fritillaries and many other winged wonders.   

Tim Wong: He is known as known as the "Pipevine Swallowtail Whisperer." Wong an aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences.

Andrea Hurd: Hurd, with the Mariposa Garden Design, will share her methods for designing meadows for butterflies. She specializes in songbird, butterfly, and pollinator habitat gardens using California native and pollinator-friendly plants.

Robin North: North, a garden designer specializing in pollinator and songbird habitat gardens in the North Bay, will share ideas for designing Sonoma County habitat gardens. 

Suzanne Clarke:  Clarke, a Sonoma County Master Gardener and "Butterfly Whisperer," will show how to rear caterpillars at her table and discuss the benefits of gardening for habitat.

Alameda County Master Gardeners:  They will be on hand to show how to garden for native pollinators.

What is the Pollinator Posse? It's a group formed in Oakland in 2013 to create pollinator-friendly landscaping in urban settings and to foster appreciation of local ecosystems through outreach, education and direct action, said Rocha, a retired Oakland parks supervisor.  "With eco-friendly landscape techniques at the heart of our work, we teach respect for the creatures which keep Oakland– and the world– blooming."

"We envision a day when life-enhancing, thought-inspiring green spaces will grace every corner of the city and the world beyond," she said.

The Pollinator Posse (see their Facebook page) is heavily into not only butterflies, but all pollinators. "Individuals and groups with separate distinguished achievements in the fields of entomology, horticulture, education, public works and volunteer engagement saw the challenge and opportunity of sustaining the indispensable work of pollinators by expanding habitat and awareness," said Rocha. "A generous gift of $10,000 from our founding sponsor, Clif Bar, launched Posse programs which have established acres of pollinator habitat; maintained existing habitat; and offered outreach and education to Oakland communities.

Their latest events include:

• A Tees for Bees at the Chabot Golf Course (filming for Tora Rocha's Jefferson Award)
• A Tee for Bees at the Redwood Canyon Golf Course (see images on Facebook)
• Sponsorship of a native pollinator garden and installation of three small "AirBeeNBees"at the Forgotten Soldier Community Garden in Auburn (See media coverage)

The Pollinator Posse will be a sponsor at the Forgotten Soldier's Earth Day celebration and will be helping youngsters create their own mini "AirBeeNBees."

Another highlight:  the Pollinator Posse will be participating in the third annual California Honey Festival on Saturday, May 4 in downtown Woodland. This is co-sponsored by the City of Woodland the the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center.  

"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble, it's the things we do know that just ain't so."--American humorist Artemus Ward (1834-1867).

This quote, often falsely attributed to Mark Twain, is a favorite of Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis.

Speaking at the second annual Butterfly Summit last Saturday, May 26 at Annie's Annuals and Perennials, Richmond, Shapiro discussed his research and offered his observations and views on the state of butterflies.  He maintains a website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/

Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on a transect across central California for 46 years. The 10 sites stretch from the Sacramento River Delta through the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains to the high desert of the Western Great Basin. Shapiro visits his sites every two weeks "to record what's out." The largest and oldest database in North America, it was recently cited by British conservation biologist Chris Thomas in a worldwide study of insect biomass.

"The vast majority of the butterflies we monitor are emerging earlier in the year now than they were in the 1970s," Shapiro said. He mentioned the Red Admiral butterfly, Vanessa atalanta, which spends the winter as an adult, is "our biggest responder to global warming, coming out 21 days earlier on average that it use to, exactly the same in England, same species. It's not weird at all. It is winter active."

His research shows that not only are butterflies coming out earlier, but "we also find trends in population and species richness."

Shapiro, a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1971 and author of the book, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento Valley Regions, said that "in a nutshell, at low elevations, butterfly faunas have been declining slowly until 1999. In 1999, 17 species had an abrupt fall in abundance, spontaneously. On its face, this was a non-random event. The decline was then rapid from 1999 to the onset of the recent drought and then things went up again."

"Things rebounded during the drought," the professor said. "We began getting better data both in terms of numbers of species and abundances. A blast from the past...When the drought ended, we had a very wet year two years ago, and now things are sliding down again. What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? What is going on?"

Shapiro noted that by and large, immature butterflies spend the winter underground or right at the surface. "This is the worst possible environment for overwintering butterflies in the early stages, what with the combination of warm and wet." The high humidity and temperature are very favorable for fungal and bacterial pathogens, he said, adding that  "Overwintering survival in warm wet conditions is poor."

"When we have a dry winter, it's colder at night but not cold enough to be lethal, he said. "It's a healthier environment to be an overwintering caterpillar. That's what we think is going on."

In the mountains or higher elevations, changes are strongly correlated with climate. "As it gets too warm and dry down below, butterflies are moving uphill, but plant resources are moving up the slope more slowly. When resources are not available yet higher up, butterflies have a real problem. There's no where to go at all for truly alpine species; they're already at the top of the mountain. The next stop is heaven." Shapiro described the decline of butterfly populations in the mountains as "worrisome."

Neonicotinoids, which Shapiro defined as "a class of synthetic pesticides chemically derived from the chemistry of nicotine," are often targeted as a cause of butterfly decline. "Neonics are not in Scotland and there's been no butterfly decline in Scotland," he pointed out. "But, anyone who has taken a statistics course knows that Correlation Is Not Causation."

Turning to monarchs, Shapiro said "More than half of the questions I get from the public deal with monarchs."

Describing the monarch as "the poster child for conservation,"  Shapiro said: "There's a lot of stuff out there in the media, and it's not all to be believed." Butterfly population counts differ from summer breeding data and the overwintering data.

"If you want the scoop on monarchs--unconnected with fundraising or politics," he said, "read Anurag Agrawal's book, Monarchs and Milkweed."  The book is subtitled "A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant and their Remarkable Story of Coevolution." Agrawal, the James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Science at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., received his doctorate in population biology from UC Davis in 1999.

"Monarchs in California have had a long decline, perhaps more dramatic than the decline in the Midwest and the East," Shapiro said, adding they have never been as common in California than they are in the East. "If they're relatively scare, that doesn't mean a decrease. We need to do comparisons over time. During the drought, they came back. We don't know why."

Shapiro also said that monarchs are winter-breeding in California, something they didn't do 10 years ago. "It started in southern California, maybe a decade ago and is now spreading to the inland empire. They're well established in the East and South Bay." He said he heard one report of monarchs winter-breeding in Woodland, Yolo County.

"Monarchs can't breed in the winter here under natural conditions," Shapiro said. "A non-native, non-dormant milkweed, tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) allows winter breeding. These plants are often contaminated with the parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha or OE, a problem in Southern California, but not yet in northern California. "People who are really committed to native plants would like you to get rid of your exotic tropical milkweed and replace it with native species that go dormant." He recommends "cutting them back three times a year" to allow fresh new growth.

Some of his take-home messages:

• Butterfly faunas are declining in most parts of the North Temperate Zone where monitoring is done. The most severe declines have been in European grassland faunas. By those standards, we're not that bad off (yet?).
• At low elevations in California, declines were moderate until 1999, when they accelerated abruptly. Our multivariate statistical analyses suggest (but cannot prove!) that climate change has been only a minor factor, while habitat conversion and loss, and loss of habitat connectivity share the blame equally with pesticides, specifically neonicotinoids.
• At higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada, species at tree-line have declined in response to climate change but there have been no losses attributable to habitat conversion or pesticides. Many species are moving upslope (or trying to, because they are more mobile than their essential plant resources).
• The recent “1000-year drought” had dramatic impacts. At low elevations, butterfly faunas rebounded from recent lows, probably due to a better environment for overwinter survival. In the mountains the opposite happened: lack of snow cover led to poor overwinter survival and faunas plummeted to unprecedented lows at places like Donner Summit. The heavy snow pack of winter 2016-17 did little to improve things, because the number of animals going into overwintering was already so low.
• We are already seeing low-elevation faunas slipping back into decline. Because most montane butterflies have only one generation a year, it will take several favorable years to rebound from the losses there.
• Our research revealed that California monarch populations had been in decline for decades, perhaps more so than in the East and Midwest.
• This was true even though the usual “suspect” causes – GMOs and milkweed shortages – do NOT appear to apply here.
• There was also a change in the seasonal breeding pattern of monarchs during the worst of the decline.
• During the drought, monarch populations rebounded significantly here, and their historic seasonal breeding pattern returned. But this year we seem to be going back to pre-drought patterns.
• Winter breeding by monarchs began in Southern California several years ago and has now spread to the Bay Area. Overwintering monarchs are supposed to be in reproductive diapause cued mainly by daylength. Why a growing percentage of them are not is a mystery which has not been solved as of this afternoon.

 

How's the butterfly population faring in north-central California? What do you plant to attract and sustain them?

You can find out at the second annual Butterfly Summit, a free event hosted by Annie's Annuals and Perennials in Richmond.  The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 26 at Annie's nursery, located at 740 Market St.

Butterfly expert Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, will speak at 11 a.m., covering the status of butterflies in the area. The author of Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions (UC Press, 2007), he has collected data over 46 years, tallying 150 species, and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/.

The distinguished professor will cover such questions as:

• Are insect faunas in free fall (as reported in Germany)?
• What have we learned from 46 years of butterfly monitoring?
• What are the relative impacts on butterflies of climate change, land use change, introduced species and pesticides?
• Are there differences in how butterfly faunas are behaving near sea level vs. in the mountains?
• Are the scary headlines about the monarch butterflies being "endangered" true? If so, why? If not, why the fuss?

Shapiro began monitoring north-central California butterflies in 1972. His is the largest and oldest such dataset in North America.

Speaking at 1 p.m. is Tora Rocha, founder of the Pollinator Posse, a volunteer group that creates pollinator corridors around the East Bay. A retired Oakland parks supervisor, she will share how landscaping practices affect pollinators, and offer tips on the best plants and practices "for making a pollinator-friendly difference no matter what size your garden." Her specialties are fostering monarch caterpillars and butterflies "and creating much-needed habitat in the urban jungle." The Pollinator Posse keeps its members and the general public updated on its Facebook page.

The family friendly event will include displays of the life cycle of butterflies and information on creating and preserving habitats. Tables will be staffed from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. to offer information to visitors. The presenters are:

• Tim Wong, aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences and known as "the pipevine swallowtail whisperer."
• Tora Rocha and fellow members of the Pollinator Posse at the Gardens at Lake Merritt, a volunteer group that supports pollinators and rears monarch caterpillars
• Andrea Hurd of Mariposa Garden Design, specializing in permaculture methods and songbird, butterfly and pollinator habitat gardens, using California native and pollinator friendly plants. Hurd will share methods for designing meadows for butterflies.
• Kelli Schley-Brownfield of Wild Flower Garden Design, Devil Mountain Nursery, and Pollinator Posse member, who will demonstrate butterfly puddling spots using Annie's plants.
• Evelyn Orantes, independent curator, arts educator and teaching artist and a new member of the Pollinator Posse, will share visual representations of butterflies in arts and culture.
• Andy Liu, landscape architect and garden design specializing in butterfly habitat, will explain why his neighborhood is alive with swallowtails, gulf fritillaries and "many other winged wonders."
• Sal Levinson, author and entomologist specializing in butterfly habitats. She is the author of Butterfly Papercrafts,  which contains 21 indoor projects for outdoor learning.

Another attraction, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. is "Giant Puppets Save the World," featuring the silk and bamboo menagerie of monarchs, hummingbirds "and more" with Toni Tone, an artist, puppeteer and stilt walker. It's billed as "super fun for the kids."