BLUE GOLD: Populations of the Adonis Blue butterfly (Polyommatus bellargus) have been declining within its grassland habitats in Great Britain due to a lack of herbivore grazing.© THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON
Throughout the 19th and most of the 20th centuries, butterfly collectors in the United Kingdom descended each spring upon fens, forests, and grasslands where prized insects thrived. Some of the net-wielders sought adventure; others hoped to add to scientific understanding; still others were motivated by mania or money. They hunted butterflies that bore evocative names, like the Adonis Blue, whose males are a striking sapphire, and the Duke of Burgundy, whose orange-and-black wings have a metallic sheen.
The collectors prized butterflies with unusual markings that made them beautiful and valuable. Now, those collections hold a wealth of information for ecologists interested in something quite different—a record of the impacts of climate change on the survival not only of butterfly species, but of associated flowering plants ...
