PULELEHUA - Butterfly Society of Hawaii

 PULELEHUA A quarterly newsletter of the Butterfly Society of Hawaii Spring 2015 Large Orange Sulphur This butterfly is a vivid yellow. Its wingspan is approximately two inches. You must be very close to see the tiny brown spots on the underside of the wings. The host plant is the very large Opiuma. Fortunately we have such a tree in the parking lot of the Foster Botanical Garden, so we have a lot of these butterflies visiting our garden all the time. They prefer the yellow flowers which would indicate they have a sense of color. l Climate change and its effects Global surface Temperature 1880-­‐2010 The Earth has experienced drastic environmental changes in the past, but we are now encountering many more severe problems faced by our planet. There are more species in danger of extinction than ever before. Man’s activities have degraded the quality of the landscape so much that species and their habitats have less capacity to respond to these environmental threats. Butterflies are among the species that have responded to the climate change in the form of northward or range elevation shifts. These changes will affect butterfly life cycles, migrating flight times, and possibly survival of the delicate creatures. Disruption of essential interactions of butterflies with their food plants will also cause mismatched timing with their caterpillar food plants and disrupt an entire food web, which had evolved to support them when there was a proper timing of resources. Our hope for future generations is that they will recognize the importance of such things as habitat restoration, captive rearing, and managed relocation. Reintroductions and assisted migrations to adequate habitats could help to sustain a species in a more accommodating environment. BSOH news We had two school groups visit our garden in May. The Le Jardine “pups”, and the special education children from Kailua Elementary were fortunate in that we had totally live examples for our life cycle exhibits, including butterflies to be released by the children . A good time was had by all. We hope they retained some of the facts about pollinators that were given to them. Hawaii’s butterfly season is now over for this year. It’s been a good one for the Society.