- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Asher Schneider, a budding entomologist who attends Eliza Sater's second-third grade class at Birch Lane Montessori, Davis, found a cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, at 10:54 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 23 on M Street, Davis.
Asher, the son of Rachel White and Ben Crago-Schneider, spotted the butterfly on salvia (sage). "Sadly this guy looked like he didn't have much time left," White said. "He was just kind of flopping around on the sage."
The family remembered reading about the annual contest in The Davis Enterprise, and emailed a photo to Shapiro.
Shapiro, clearly delighted in the youth's participation in what would have been the 50th annual contest (canceled the last two years due to the COVID pandemic precautions) promptly named him "runner-up."
The first of 2022? Shapiro recorded a P. rapae in West Sacramento at 1:25 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 19.
"Pop goes the Pieris!" Shapiro emailed to his colleagues and friends.
Jan. 19 was the day that his colleague-collaborator Matt Forister, the Trevor McMinn Endowed Professor in Biology, Foundation Professor, at the University of Nevada, calculated it would be sighted. Forister, who received his doctorate in ecology (2004) from UC Davis, studying with Shapiro, creates "The First Flight Date" graphs. "And.... as if we had coordinated efforts (which we didn't), here's the graph!" Forister wrote in an email. "Art, you nailed it right on the regression line this time, you deserve an extra beer."
The contest involves collecting the first cabbage white butterfly of the year in the three-county area of Yolo, Sacramento and Solano. The traditional rules: Catch a live cabbage white butterfly in the wild in one of those three counties, deliver it live to Shapiro's department in Storer Hall, UC Davis (with the full data, exact time, date and location of the capture) and if it's the first of the year, the winner receives a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Last year Shapiro collected the first of the year in a "non-contest" at 1:55 p.m. Jan. 16 on the UC Davis campus.
Since 1972, the first flight of the cabbage white has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20. Shapiro says with climate warming, the species is now emerging a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago here.
P. rapae inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow. The male is white. The female is often slightly buffy; the "underside of the hindwing and apex of the forewing may be distinctly yellow and normally have a gray cast,” Shapiro says. “The black dots and apical spot on the upperside tend to be faint or even to disappear really early in the season.”
Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on transects across central California since 1972 and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.
In its larval form, the cabbage white butterfly, known as "the imported cabbageworm," is a pest of cole crops. "Cabbageworm larvae chew large, irregular holes in leaves, bore into heads, and drop greenish brown fecal pellets that may contaminate the marketed product," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. "Seedlings may be damaged, but most losses are due to damage to marketed parts of the plant."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
But he'll have a beer anyway!
UC Davis distinguished professor Art Shapiro, Department of Evolution and Ecology, didn't sponsor his annual public "Beer for a Butterfly" contest this year but he recorded his first-of-the-year sighting of a cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, at 1:25 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 19 in West Sacramento near a railroad embankment.
"Pop Goes the Pieris!" Shapiro emailed to his colleagues.
And it was exactly the day that his colleague-collaborator Matt Forister, the Trevor McMinn Endowed Professor in Biology, Foundation Professor, at the University of Nevada, calculated it would be sighted.
Forister, who received his doctorate in ecology in 2004 at UC Davis, studying with Shapiro, crafts "The First Flight Date" graphics, using Shapiro's statistics. "And.... as if we had coordinated efforts (which we didn't), here's the graph!" Forister wrote in an email. "Art, you nailed it right on the regression line this time, you deserve an extra beer."
Shapiro, who maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.
For scientific purposes, Shapiro seeks the first cabbage-white-butterfly-of-the year in the three-county area of Yolo, Sacramento and Solano. The contest is also known as "Suds for Bugs." The traditional rules: Catch a live cabbage white butterfly in the wild in one of those three counties, deliver it live to his department in Storer Hall, UC Davis (with the full data, exact time, date and location of the capture) and if it's the first of the year, the winner receives a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic precautions, however, Shapiro hasn't sponsored the contest for two years. But he's recorded the first ones he's seen.
In his Jan. 19th email documenting the sighting, Shapiro wrote:
"Today was a gorgeous day in West Sacramento--no high or middle clouds for the first time in seemingly forever. The site has the heaviest midwinter Crucifer bloom in many years. In order of abundance: Brassica kaber (wild mustard), Raphanus (wild radish), and B. campestris (field mustard). Also in bloom: Amsinckia (fiddlenecks) and a few Erodium (filaree) and (Lamium amplexicaule) giraffe heads. It looks like late February or even March. The twigs on almond are coloring up. No other tree action noted yet! 61F, N wind 5-10 mph but blocked by the RR embankment. It felt quite warm on the sheltered lee side, but in the open, exposed to the wind, it didn't.
"At 1:25 p.m., I encountered a male rapae dorsal-basking; it took flight at once. Since there is no contest again this year I had no net and there is no specimen. But there we are..." (He also saw a Vanessa atalanta or red admiral butterfly, "so 2 species, 2 bugs," he wrote.)
P. rapae inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow. The male is white. The female is often slightly buffy; the "underside of the hindwing and apex of the forewing may be distinctly yellow and normally have a gray cast,” Shapiro says. “The black dots and apical spot on the upperside tend to be faint or even to disappear really early in the season.”
Shapiro usually wins his own contest as he knows where to find them. Over the last five years, the contest statistics include:
- 2022, Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected his first of the year at 1:25 p.m. in West Sacramento (no contest held due to COVID precautions)
- 2021, Jan. 16: Shapiro collected his first of the year at 1:55 p.m. Jan. 16 on the UC Davis campus, Yolo County (no contest held, due to COVID precautions)
- 2020, Jan. 30: Shapiro recorded his first of the year at 11:16 a.m. on Jan. 30 in Winters (he didn't net the butterfly so he said "no winner")
- 2019, Jan. 25: Shapiro collected the winner at 1:12 p.m., Jan. 25 near the Suisun Yacht Club, Solano County.
- 2018, Jan. 19: Shapiro collected the winner at 11:23 a.m. Friday, Jan. 19 West Sacramento, Yolo County
Since 2010, most of the winning butterflies were collected in West Sacramento:
- 2017: Jan. 19: Shapiro collected the winner on the UC Davis campus
- 2016: Jan. 16: Jacob Montgomery, UC Davis graduate student, collected the winner in west Davis
- 2015: Jan. 26: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2014: Jan. 14: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2013: Jan. 21: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2012: Jan. 8: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2011: Jan. 31: Shapiro collected the winner in Suisun
- 2010: Jan. 27: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
The butterfly is emerging earlier and earlier as the regional climate has warmed, says Shapiro, whose researches involves biological responses to climate change. "The cabbage white is now emerging a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago here."
Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on transects across central California since 1972 and records the information on his research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/. His 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. 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.
In its larval form, the cabbage white butterfly, known as "the imported cabbageworm," is a pest of cole crops. "Cabbageworm larvae chew large, irregular holes in leaves, bore into heads, and drop greenish brown fecal pellets that may contaminate the marketed product," according to the UC Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. "Seedlings may be damaged, but most losses are due to damage to marketed parts of the plant."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
No winner yet.
The annual “Beer for a Butterfly" or "Suds for a Bug" contest has not produced a winner.
But somewhere out there, is a cabbage white butterfly taking its first flight.
As you may remember, Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis,sponsors the annual contest and the first person in the three-county area of Sacramento, Yolo and Solano who collects the first live cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, of the new year--outdoors--wins a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
The good professor was out looking again today. "It's another another gorgeous day," he reported to fellow scientists and others in an email this afternoon. "It FEELS like a 'rapae day,' but my schedule today is so convoluted (teaching, interviewing a job candidate, a meeting and two seminars) that I only had time to do a quick loop of community gardens...And I had just enough time to walk around Old East Davis for half an hour looking for Vanessas. I saw...nothing. But maybe somebody got a rapae today?".
Shapiro, who maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu, launched the contest in 1972 as part of his scientific research to record the first flight of the butterfly in the three-county area. It's a contest he usually wins. He has been defeated only four times, and all by UC Davis graduate students.
Since 1972, the first flight has varied from Jan. 1 to Feb. 22, averaging about Jan. 20.
In 2018, he collected the winner at 11:23 a.m. Friday, Jan. 19 in one of his frequented sites—a mustard patch by railroad tracks in West Sacramento, Yolo County.
The butterfly inhabits vacant lots, fields and gardens where its host plants, weedy mustards, grow.
The contest rules include:
- It must be an adult (no caterpillars or pupae) and be captured outdoors.
- It must be delivered alive to the department office, 2320 Storer Hall, UC Davis, during work hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the full data (exact time, date and location of the capture) and your name, address, phone number and/or e-mail. The receptionist will certify that it is alive and refrigerate it. (If you collect it on a weekend or holiday, keep it in a refrigerator; do not freeze. A few days in the fridge will not harm it, Shapiro says.)
- Shapiro is the sole judge.
The list of winners, dates and locations since 2010:
- 2018: Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento, Yolo County
- 2017: Jan. 19: Art Shapiro collected the winner on the UC Davis campus
- 2016: Jan. 16: Jacob Montgomery, UC Davis graduate student, collected the winner in west Davis
- 2015: Jan. 26: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2014: Jan. 14: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2013: Jan. 21: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2012: Jan. 8: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
- 2011: Jan. 31: Shapiro collected the winner in Suisun, Solano County
- 2010: Jan. 27: Shapiro collected the winner in West Sacramento
Shapiro has monitored butterfly population trends on a transect across central California for 46 years and records the information on his research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/. His 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" from spring to fall. 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.
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, has studied a total of 163 species of butterflies in his transect.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They're everywhere.
But they're not welcome.
Agriculturists who commercially grow cabbage and other cucurbits aren't fond of the cabbage white butterlfy, Pieris rapae, because its larvae are pests that ravish their crops.
No welcome mat for them.
This butterfly, however, is welcome--sort of--starting Jan. 1 of every year in the three-county area of Sacramento, Solano and Yolo. It's the target of the "Beer for a Butterfly Contest," sponsored by Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology. The first one collected in the three-county area collects a pitcher of beer or its equivalent.
Professor Shapiro, who maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu, launched the contest in 1972 as part of his long-term studies of butterfly life cycles and climate change. Pieris rapae is emerging earlier and earlier as the regional climate has warmed, he says. "The cabbage white is now emerging a week or so earlier on average than it did 30 years ago here."
He usually wins the suds-for-a-bug contest; he has been defeated only four times, and all by UC Davis graduate students. This year (2018) he collected the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, at 11:23 a.m. Friday, Jan. 19 in one of his frequented sites—a mustard patch by railroad tracks in West Sacramento, Yolo County. (See Bug Squad blog)
Last weekend we spotted a cabbage white nectaring on lantana, a common occurrence. What was not so common was that this one wasn't skittish. It lingered like a ballerina anticipating a curtain call, and allowed us to photograph it in flight.