long term butterfly research from U.C. Davis professor
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Biggest butterfly net ever
Prof's 35-year study flutters about on Web
By Matt Weiser - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:33 am PDT Thursday, March 15, 2007
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B3
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Arthur Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Davis, studies butterflies along the American River Parkway in North Sacramento, one of 11 such sites he has frequented for the past 35 years. In so doing, he has encountered 159 species, some of which have become extinct. Sacramento Bee/Brian Baer
For 35 years, butterflies of the Sacramento Valley and the Sierra Nevada have been Arthur Shapiro's obsession.
Shapiro, a UC Davis professor of evolution and ecology, has visited the same 11 observation sites from Suisun Marsh to high mountain valleys since 1972 -- most of them every two weeks.
He has recorded more than 83,000 sightings of 159 species, representing every color of the rainbow. Along the way, new butterflies have come on the scene. Others apparently have blinked out.
Shapiro recorded all he saw. And it's all now available to the public in a massive database of regional butterfly activity that is rivaled by only one other resource worldwide.
"Butterflies have become very important indicators of global change," he said. "We want the database to be used by anyone looking to test ideas about biological responses to global change."
What makes Shapiro's database -- the fruit of his painstaking tracking of butterflies -- even more remarkable is that he does not drive.
He returns to the observation sites using public transportation and arranging rides from students and colleagues.
"I gave up driving many years ago as my contribution to public safety," said Shapiro, 61. "People whose eyes are on the roadside, rather than the road, belong in a passenger seat -- not behind the wheel."
At first it was relatively easy. He planned his 11 survey locations along Greyhound bus routes. He rode the bus, for instance, to Donner Summit, got off at Boreal Ski Resort, and hiked up to Castle Peak from there to look for butterflies.
Then Greyhound began cutting back its service and eliminating stops, including the one at Boreal. So Shapiro said he began accepting offers from others to "come along" to look for butterflies or to tap into his deep experience with local flora and fauna.
"Now, alas, I have to rely on student field assistants to access some sites as well as help with collecting the data," he said. "But they get an immersion experience in Sierran ecology."
The database became available on the Internet at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu as of March 1. Making it public is a condition of the National Science Foundation grant that helped create it.
The resource is considered the world's largest site-specific dataset on butterfly populations collected by one person. Its only peer is a British database that covers more ground but fewer species and habitat types.
"I really applaud the effort that went into it. It's a fantastic resource," Carol Boggs, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University, said of Shapiro's work. She has used the database in her own research. "Being able to access it more easily and more readily is going to stimulate a lot of work."
Raw numbers in the database are available only by request, primarily so Shapiro can help connect researchers probing similar questions, he said. Dozens of researchers such as Boggs already have made use of it over the years.
The Web site offers a vast resource. It includes population trends and charts, effects of weather and habitat changes, a narrative life history of each species and observation site, beautiful photographs of butterflies, tips to create a butterfly garden, even a "butterfly detective" feature to teach species identification.
Shapiro hopes the database will help reveal more about the impact of climate change on wildlife. It already has helped document that many species are moving farther upslope in the Sierra Nevada in response to warmer temperatures.
Other species apparently have gone extinct locally due to unknown changes, including, in Sacramento, the California ringlet and large marble butterflies.
"Students who don't have his long experience in the field are going to be able to mine the database ... to develop new ideas," said Boggs. "What it does is it speeds up science and it speeds up the process of discovery by having that publicly available."
Shapiro's work also has led to a book: University of California Press this spring will publish "Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions."
"Lots of things are happening with butterflies that people just are not aware of," he said.
