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  • Audio file (If file doesn’t begin playing immediately, right-click to download it and then listen) USGS links Assessment of undiscovered oil resources in the Bakken and Three Forks Formations, Williston Basin Province, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2013 Input-form data for the U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Devonian and Mississippian Bakken and Devonian Three [...]

  • Other links Pesticide report leaves tough questions unanswered (Defenders of Wildlife) Feds Are Failing to Protect Endangered Species From Pesticides (Center for Biological Diversity) Press release from National Research Council (4/30/2013) Federal Agencies Should Use a Common Approach to Evaluate Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered and Threatened Species WASHINGTON — When determining the potential effects [...]

  • “W.Va. members of Congress promise action against EPA” is the headline in the West Virginia Record, whose article noted that 80 percent of the state’s congressional delegation had posted press releases criticizing the D.C. Circuit’s decision that said EPA had the authority to partially revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine. (Only Jay Rockefeller appears [...]

  • The National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council will release a report next week evaluating the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. Here’s the statement from NAS: Evaluating Risks That Pesticides Pose to Endangered, Threatened Species – New Report A new report from the National Research Council examines how the U.S. Environmental Protection [...]

  • U.S. District Court Judge Joseph C. Spero dismissed an ESA citizen suit seeking to force consultation under the ESA “regarding the effects of 382 registered pesticides on endangered and threatened species” (Center for Biological Diversity v. EPA, 11-293-JCS, N.D. Cal.). “Plaintiffs have not pled sufficient facts to show that the EPA was required to reinitiate [...]

  • The D.C. Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision that had scolded EPA for revoking a Clean Water Act permit that already had been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. U.S. EPA, 12-5150, 4/23/13). Wrong, the appeals court said. “[W]e reverse the district court insofar as it [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 19, 2013): Asian elephant shot, loggerhead sea turtle egg snatcher sentenced, DOI budget proposed

    Catching up on the Fish and Wildlife Service: The service’s main page features the following news releases: FWS is investigating the shooting of an Asian elephant traveling with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Tupelo, Miss. “The incident occurred in the early morning of April 9, 2013, outside the Bancorp South Arena,” the [...]

  • Daily Digest (April 17, 2013)

    The American Bird Conservancy is touting a study that concludes feral cats are killing endangered Hawaiian petrels. The proof is in the pictures, ABC said. For the first time, videos were taken showing cats preying on petrels. In one, a feral cat “wait[ed] near the entrance of a burrow for over one hour.  When the [...]

  • Link to the full document The Obama Administration today released its National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, which the service said “provides a roadmap of key steps needed over the next five years to reduce the current and expected impacts of climate change on our natural resources, which include: changing species distributions and [...]

  • Audubon writer Ted Williams suspended, pulled from masthead, for Orlando Sentinel column on feral cats

    Update, 3/25/13: The media are starting to take note of Williams’ suspension. See the article and the list of links below for more coverage of this story. Veteran conservation journalist Ted Williams, who for years has penned the Incite column for Audubon magazine, has been suspended and had his name removed from the publication’s masthead, [...]

Miami blue butterfly alights on endangered species list

 Posted by on April 11, 2012  Daily Links, FR, FWS, Listings
Apr 112012
 

The woeful record of this site in recording the addition of species to the threatened and endangered species list should not prevent us from noting a new member from Florida. Twelve years after it received a petition, the Fish and Wildlife Service placed the Miami blue butterfly on the list of endangered species.

The butterfly was emergency-listed in August — Aug. 10, 2011, to be precise — but that protection expired April 4, the day before the final listing was announced. The rule was published in the Federal Register April 6.

In addition, FWS designated as threatened, due to similarity of appearance to the Miami blue, the cassius blue butterfly (Leptotes cassius theonus), ceraunus blue butterfly (Hemiargus ceraunus antibubastus), and nickerbean blue butterfly (Cyclargus ammon).

Those species were listed “in portions of their ranges,” FWS said.

Nabokov was right on taxonomy

Nabokov and friend

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the final rule on the species’ genetic makeup that supports novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov’s view on the proper genus for the Miami blue:

Although some authors continue to use Hemiargus, Nabokov (1945, p. 14) instituted Cyclargus for some species, which has been supported by more recent research…

Kurt Johnson (in litt. 2002), who has published most of the existing literature since 1950 on the blue butterflies of the tribe Polyommatini, reaffirmed that thomasi belongs in the genus Cyclargus (Nabokov 1945, p. 14), not Hemiargus. Accordingly, Cyclargus thomasi bethunebakeri (Pelham 2008, p. 21) and its taxonomic standing is accepted (Integrated Taxonomic Information System 2011, p. 1).

The reference is to Nabokov’s 1945 paper, Cyclargus n.g. Notes on Neotropical Plebejinæ (Lycaenidae, Lepidoptera). Psyche 52:1-61.

The subject of Nabokov’s research has been discussed at length before. In the New York Times last year, Carl Zimmer wrote

Nabokov’s reputation as a scientist languished until the 1990s. Kurt Johnson, an entomologist then at the American Museum of Natural History, examined the genitals of the [Polyommatus] blues and was surprised at their diversity. Searching the literature for help, he came across Nabokov’s work. As he later described in the 2000 book “Nabokov’s Blues,” written with Steve Coates, Dr. Johnson set about reviving Nabokov’s classification. Working with Zsolt Balint of the Hungarian Museum of Natural History and Dubi Benyamini, an Israeli collector, he collected new blues and carefully examined them. In the end, they decided Nabokov was right in his classification. Along the way, they even named some new species in his honor, like Nabokovia cuzquenha.

The article also discusses how Nabokov “envisioned [the blues] coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.”

Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. Last week in The Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

“It’s really quite a marvel,” said Naomi Pierce of Harvard, a co-author of the paper.

LINKS

Cyclargus thomasi bethunebakeri