Biologists on a trail in the Ecuadoran Amazon hold their breath as they distribute a foul-smelling delicacy to lure butterflies, critical pollinators increasingly threatened by climate change.
A team has hung 32 traps made of green nets, each baited with rotting fish and fermented bananas. They are meant to blend in with the forest canopy.
Their pungent odor clearly does not.
Photo: AFP
Since August last year, a team of biologists and park rangers has been monitoring butterfly numbers in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a park famed for its abundant flora and fauna. They catch and document the colorful insects, releasing most with an identifying mark on their wings.
Some of them, possibly from previously unknown species, are kept for further study.
However, the results of the team’s work have been discouraging.
Butterflies are “bioindicators,” living organisms whose well-being provides a measure of the health of their surrounding ecosystem, and their numbers are decreasing, biologist Maria Fernanda Checa said.
While the number of species might not have declined by more than 10 percent, in terms of absolute butterfly numbers “the decrease is very significant ... maybe 40, 50 percent,” she said. “It is something that alarms us.”
Under expedition leader Elisa Levy, a team checks the nets for captured butterflies. They hold the insects delicately by their tiny abdomens, and manipulate their legs and wings with tweezers. Some are bright red and blue, others have what resemble zebra stripes. Some are see-through, like glass.
About three-quarters of fruit or seed-producing crops for human consumption depend on pollinators, which provide a free service worth billions of dollars.
The UN has warned that 40 percent of invertebrate pollinators — particularly bees and butterflies — risk global extinction, posing certain risks to humanity itself.
Butterflies are “very sensitive, even to small changes in the ecosystem” throughout their short lifespan from egg to caterpillar to reproductive adult, Checa said.
Levy explained that tropical plants — unlike ones in regions with distinct seasons — are not accustomed to extreme weather variations.
If they do not adapt to a fast-changing climate, these plants could be lost, along with the butterfly larvae that feed on them.
Ecuador, relatively small, but extremely biodiverse, hosts about 4,000 butterfly species — nearly as many as its much larger neighbors Peru and Colombia.
Yet in places like the Yasuni National Park, which neighbors Cuyabeno, “the rate of species discovery is slower than the rate of extinction,” Checa said.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS