Illinois Nature museum lab helps population of rare butterflies to take off

Regal fritillary.
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Doug Taron and Vincent Olivares are no Dr. Frankensteins, but they believe they have gone a long way in solving the mystery of how to get a very rare butterfly species to successfully breed in their laboratory at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

For the last few weeks, they have had more than 100 adult regal fritillary butterflies emerge from chrysalises in the museum lab. The males came out first, with 30 of them freed to the wilds of Sundrop Prairie, a restored grassland prairie near south suburban Markham where their ancestors once were abundant. On Monday, the rest will be freed there, including the females, which are expected to breed and lay eggs in the wild next fall.

It is work that should get noticed throughout the Great Plains states and the Eastern Seaboard, where regal fritillaries, if they haven't disappeared altogether, are having trouble surviving. It is a rare captive breeding success of the species, achieved after years of experimentation and failure, with not much more than some plastic cups, crumpled paper towels, upended flowerpots and a little intuition.

More: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-07-12/news/ct-met-endangered-butterfly-20100712_1_swamp-metalmark-silver-bordered-fritillary-regal-fritillary

car. It laid its eggs on the back of the passenger seat, then expired. I removed the eggs, researched what the caterpillars ate and put a branch of a native cherry tree in a 3 gallon glass jar. The eggs hatched, and for the next several weeks, I put fresh branches of their favorite food in the jar.

The caterpillars grew, and I photographed them at each instar. Eventually, they created cocoons on the stems of the tree.

After what seemed like far too long a period, I walked by the jar one morning, to find a dozen adult moths inside. I took them to the wild cherry tree I had been using to feed the caterpillars and released them all. The Cecropia moth is one of the largest moths in the US. I have no idea if they are endangered.

A fascinating process:

Being a kid in that regard is wonderful!