LISTEN: Scientists want to see if certain contaminants are present in butterflies, and may be why so many of the insects are in steep population decline. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
When you see a dead butterfly, put it an envelope, stamp it and stick it in the mail — for science.
That’s the request from government scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and their Lepidotera Research Collection.
Julie Dietze is a Kansas-based earth scientist with the USGS. She and her colleagues are experts in finding in water and sediments pollutants which originate on farms. That includes things like the herbicide glyphosate (aka Roundup) and antibiotics used to keep livestock healthy in large-scale feeding operations. Think poultry farms and feedlots.
Meanwhile, Dietze has always had a soft spot for butterflies and moths.
"And so I thought, 'Well, why couldn't we look at a butterfly or a moth to see if the contaminants that we're able to detect in water and sediment?'” Dietze asked. "What if those are present in butterflies?"
If those same contaminants are present in butterflies, Dietze said that could be part of the explanation of why so many lepidopterans are in steep population decline.
Dietze said while scientists know how to do the testing, there was just one big problem.
“How are we supposed to answer these huge research questions that we have if we can't have specimens from all over the United States?” Dietze asked. “The only way we're going to do this is if everybody helps.”
Now people in Georgia, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Alabama are being asked to scoop up and mail dead moths and butterflies to Dietze. She said those six states were chosen because, in one way or another, the farm practices in question are present on the landscape there and those states are all in the flyway for one of the major monarch butterfly migrations.
Dietze said the first specimen that came in the mail originated not far from her office in Kansas.
“And I thought, 'It's going to be beautiful.' It's going to be this gorgeous swallowtail, you know?” Dietze remembered. “No, it was a bag of dust. Bag of butterfly dust.”
But she was anything but disappointed.
“I thought, ‘You know what? That is so cool that somebody in Kansas City thought, ‘I'm pay 66 cents to mail this in for science.’”
There are guidelines for submission.
Specimens must be at least 2 inches in diameter. They need to be in plastic bags. And if you think it will be a few days before you can get it in the mail, stick the butterfly in the freezer.
Since that first bag of butterfly dust, other samples have rolled in, such as a beautifully preserved Sphinx moth from Texas. Dietze said in the past few days, they’ve had their biggest shipment of samples yet.
Dietze said she hopes as the Lepidoptera Research Collection grows, other scientists with other questions can start to use it, too. Already she has received a request from a university-based genomicist for just a single Monarch leg.
And while the six-state pilot project ends in November, Dietze hopes to continue and expand to other states.
