Highlights from the First Season

Thank you for helping us make the first year of this atlas an incredible success! We had 104 blocks adopted by 75 participants (72/184 priority blocks and 32 non-priority blocks). We had 88 observers report 88 butterfly species in 1,781 complete checklists comprising 6,295 butterfly occurrence records to e-Butterfly.org, our official atlas data portal. Additionally, nearly 950 observers reported more than 5,500 butterfly photo-vouchers to the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist. What an incredible start to the atlas despite a very rainy summer.

We'd also like to thank those of you that have helped us with crowd-sourced identifications on e-Butterfly too. We have species identifications for over 75% of the records from this year already! It is great cold weather fun. We'd love to have as many folks looking at records as we can to help root out any identification issues or other data problems with the checklists.

We have not fully explored the data yet, but already we have had some noteworthy findings from the first field season—a new species discovered, expanding and contracting ranges documented, and new natural history findings.

The atlas kicked off this spring with some big news from the field—a new native species was discovered for Vermont. One of the smallest butterflies on the continent, Bog Elfin (Callophrys lanoraieensis) is notoriously hard to locate. Not only does it spend most of its life high in Black Spruce trees, it is on the wing and detectable for only a few weeks from mid-May to early June. A concerted effort was made during (and after) the first atlas to visit Black Spruce bogs that appeared to provide suitable habitat for Bog Elfin. Despite repeated searches during its known flight period, no colonies were found in Vermont. Although more common in the Canadian Maritimes, this species has a somewhat limited range and appears to be absent from most suitable bogs. That all changed on May 19th when Bryan Pfeiffer ventured into prime habitat in northwestern Vermont and found a new colony in Vermont. The story received ample press coverage locally and regionally in the Boston Globe. The species is now ranked as an S1 (critically imperiled) and we hope to find more colonies during the atlas.

In 2020, just fifteen years after it was first discover near Montreal, Canada, the European Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) was found in Vermont. The species now occupies the Champlain Islands and the northern shoreline in Vermont and will likely keep expanding. David Hoag, a veteran of both atlases, closely monitored a population this year and found them to have two or perhaps even three flight periods. A study in Montreal in 2017 and 2018 recorded two flight, May-June and July-August. In there native range in southern Britain there are two broods a year, flying in May and June and again in August and September. In a year with a long warm autumn, there is sometimes a partial third brood flying into October. But northern England has just one flight lasting from June into September. It will be interesting to see how the phenology of this species changes in warmer areas like the Champlain Islands.

Last October the first European Peacock was photographed in Vermont. The species native range is in in Europe and Asia, but it was first found in 1997 in the Montréal, Québec region. A shipment of containers from Romania had arrived at the port a few days prior to the sighting and this may be the source of the introduction. It is now well established in the greater Montréal area and extending into the southwest of the province. This year atlas volunteers were able to add five more records, continuing the documentation of this species' march southward into Vermont. All the records are from autumn in the Champlain Islands.

Before the first butterfly atlas, there was just one record of Wild Indigo Duskywing in Vermont, two specimens from Bennington in 1952 in the Harvard MCZ collection. And these have only come to light recently thanks to digitization efforts. During the first Vermont Butterfly Atlas, we recorded it 25 times from southern Vermont and northward to Rutland. The flood gates have now opened. This year alone we had over 75 records recorded from nearly every region but the Northeast. What changed? It has found a new host plant—Crown Vetch, which is planted along many roadways and construction sites to prevent erosion. Its native host plant was Eastern Wild Indigo (Baptisia tinctoria), which is only found in the very southern part of Vermont. The Broad-winged Skipper is another example of a species changing from a native plant, Wild Rice, to a more common introduced species—Common Reed Grass. This invasive plant occupies many disturbed wetlands now.

These are also great examples of why we all need to learn a bit of botany and record plant use and records on the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist too! All this information joined together helps us to understand changes that we are detecting. There are many more stories lurking in the atlas data and we'll be sure to share them as we uncover more butterfly mysteries.

From Botany to Butterfly: A Community Science Success Story

This is perhaps one of our favorite stories shared with us this year. Atlas volunteer Sharon Glezen shared this on an e-Butterfly checklist from September. She read about Emperor butterflies in the last issue of the Chrysalis. She then learned how to identify a Common Hackberry Tree, their host plant. So then she visited the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist and learned where those trees might be found and discovered that they line Main Street right in the middle of the UVM campus. So she snuck out of her office periodically to check the trees. What a great way to take a nature break! Then one day she finds a Hackberry Emperor "in all its glory," she notes and the image (above) that she captured shows. And the ending is the best as she writes, "Heart goes pitter-pat." Yes indeed!

Vermont Butterfly Species Conservation Ranks Updated

Ranking species according to their risk of extinction is an important exercise that helps to prioritize which species most urgently require conservation action. Several ranking systems are used in Vermont. Some consider species status at a statewide scale, while others consider the global status of species. We recently teamed up with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department to update a few butterfly state ranks using the latest data from the atlas.

NatureServe conservation status ranks are part of an international ranking system first developed by The Nature Conservancy and now managed by NatureServe. This system is used by Natural Heritage programs in all 50 states, by the 8 Canadian Conservation Data Centres, and by other international partners. NatureServe, Network Programs, and collaborators like VAL use a rigorous, consistent, and transparent methodology to assess the conservation status (extinction or extirpation risk) of species. The Wildlife Diversity Program at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, gathers data and assigns Conservation Status Ranks (S-ranks) at the state level in cooperation with partners like us. Assigning a Conservation Status Rank to a species requires scoring it along 10 conservation status factors, then weighting and pooling the scores into an overall score, which is then translated into a calculated rank, ranging from S1 (very rare/critically imperiled in the state) to S5 (common and widespread/secure).

There are 15 species with a rank of S1 now, including our newest species, Bog Elfin shown above. Nearly a quarter of all known Vermont butterfly species have a rank of S3 (vulnerable) or lower.

You can now search, filter and explore each butterfly species state rank and learn more by visiting a species account using our new online checklist. As we gather more data during the atlas, we'll be able to better refine some of these rankings and create an action plan to conserve Vermont's beautiful butterflies.

Species Spotlight: Two-spotted Skipper

A bit of planning this winter is warranted if you want to encounter this relatively rare skipper on your survey block during its short late June to mid-July flight period. Two-spotted Skipper specializes in bogs, fens and marshes where its main documented food plant, Hairy-fruited Sedge (Carex trichocarpa) is found. This winter you can explore aerial images using online maps to see if there are any open wetlands that might fit this description. This is how I first located potential habitat in my block and discovered a new population this year that extended its range into a new biophysical region. Its also worth looking at the historic locations on this map to see if you can resurvey a previously known colony too. Right now they are spending the winter as a half-grown larva, but when they eclose and fly next summer you may find them nectaring on marsh flowers such as Pickerelweed, Northern Blue Flag Iris and other flowers in nearby meadows. Finding this butterfly is always an adventure and often involves very wet feet. You may also encounter other sedge wetland skippers of conservation concern, like Dion Skipper, Black Dash, or Mulberry Wing. Seek out wetlands for surveying and you'll likely be rewarded! 

Log Your Volunteer Hours for Conservation Funding

Established in 2000 by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, State Wildlife Grants (SWG) provide money to states, territories, commonwealths, and others to address wildlife conservation needs such as research, surveys, monitoring, and species and habitat management. Projects focus on Species of Greatest Conservation Need identified in each State Wildlife Action Plan. The Vermont Butterfly Atlas has been an integral project for these plans and is partly funded by SWG. The 2015 plan included 16 butterfly species as Species of Greatest Conservation Concern. The third update to the plan is due in 2025 and we'll be helping complete it once again using data from this atlas.

Here's where we need your help. The state must match the federal funding. The good news is that your efforts with the Second Vermont Butterfly Atlas count as in-kind match! You can help match funding by logging into an online portal and entering your survey hours and mileage. Please consider taking the time as soon as you can to help unlock these conservation dollars.

You will first need to gather all of your atlas hours and mileage for each date. This would include any time traveling to a site, surveying butterflies, and entering data or even helping to identify other users observations. The easiest way to start is to visit your e-Butterfly.org account and collect all the dates and hours you were surveying, visit https://www.e-butterfly.org/ebapp/en/checklists/mychecklists. This may take a bit of time and your best estimate of hours each day is all that is needed, but the reporting requires your sign-off and then our approval too. Once you have all your data, you then sign into the reporting portal the state has created and add all of your information. Visit this link to see the illustrated steps and start adding your's too!

Butterfly Videos and Books for Winter Learning and Enjoyment

Have you been skipping skippers? This video series by Dick Walton will help you enjoy seeking them. This online video guide presents the skippers as you will see them in their natural habitats. The narration describes characteristic features of each skipper that distinguish one species from another. Similar looking skippers as well as species that occur in the same season and/or habitat are placed together to facilitate comparison. Watch them over and over. Oh, and don't forget to download Sharon Wander's guide to skipper tops too!

There are of course many field guides to page through and study all winter long, but here's a list of a few of our favorite longer reads:

• Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year - Robert M. Pyle
• The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect - Wendy Williams
• Butterfly People - William R. Leach
• Butterflies of Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces - Phillip G. deMaynadier, John Klymko, Ronald G. Butler, W. Herbert Wilson Jr., John V. Calhoun

Feel free to start conversations about these resources and anything about butterflies on our atlas forum. I am sure we'd all enjoy wintertime butterfly discussions!