Bringing Back the Checkerspot

Establishment of a charismatic butterfly (Euphydryas phaeton) and its host plant, the Turtlehead wildflower Chelone glabra, into a Brandeis wetland.

Both wildflowers and butterflies have become less common throughout New England over the last 100 years, especially in city and suburb. Habitat change from Yankee farmer meadow to scrubby forest to woodsy housing development with lawns is probably the largest cause of wildflower declines. Deer – but not their predators the Gray Wolf or mountain lion -- have been on the rebound for years in the region, and deer graze heavily on flowers. Then in 2008 Richard Primack and his students at Boston University reported that climate change has caused mismatches between flowering time and pollinator activity in the Greater Boston area. Primack used Thoreau’s journals to obtain flowering times for scores of plants that lived in Concord over 100 years ago, and found that many species are no longer present. Those that remain are flowering an average of 2 weeks earlier.

The loss of a wildflower species is cause for regret for nature lovers, but it can mean local extinction for specialized insects. Such is the case for the small wetland food web that consists of the White Turtlehead flower (Chelone glabra) and the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly (Euphydryas phaeton). Female Checkerspots lay egg clusters on the leaves of just two species of plants: Turtlehead and the leaves of a common lawn weed, the Narrow-leaved plantain, Plantago lanceolata. Turtlehead is largely gone from local wetlands, and laying eggs on lawn plantain is risky because lawns get mowed so frequently.

Both the wildflower and the butterflies that feed on it (as caterpillars) are striking organisms, and were once widespread along ponds and river banks throughout the Commonwealth. Heller School ecologist Eric Olson learned of several projects aimed at restoring this mini foodweb and realized that Brandeis had just the right combination of habitats – a wetland for Turtlehead surrounded by plantain-infested lawn that could be protected in places from mowing. This would serve as an example of habitat restoration that Olson hoped would inspire students, but also educate the University community about the various causes of local extinctions, including climate change. “All global extinction, or the complete loss of a species from the Earth, occurs first as single local extinctions, one site after another” says Olson. “Restoring a local population improves the chances that species in decline will never go extinct everywhere. It gives us some breathing room.”

In 2006 the Town of Waltham Conservation Commission Coordinator Gloria Champion and the State Dept. of Environmental Protection gave the go-ahead for an effort to reestablish this wildflower/butterfly combo in a ~ 2.5 acre wetland located in the shadow of the main library on the Brandeis campus. The first step was taken in 2006 and 2007, when Olson began to plant in White Turtlehead plants purchased from the New England Wild Flower Society (NEWFS). There have been numerous setbacks -- some of his first batch of plants were eaten down to the ground the very first year, probably by deer that occasionally wander onto campus following the Fitchberg Commuter Rail right of way.

The following spring hundreds of seeds of Turtlehead purchased from NEWFS mysteriously failed to germinate. Most recently Olson’s friend and supplier of Baltimore caterpillars, Don Adams of West Bridgewater, suffered a population crash of Checkerspots on his own property, so he has pulled back for now from sharing from his stock while he rebuilds his numbers.

Olson continues to plant in Turtlehead plants each year, and last winter he managed to rear three Checkerspot caterpillars through the winter on Brandeis property. Being so few, it is not surprising that all were found and killed by ants or other predators the following spring (2009). But the Turtlehead plants that were eaten a few years back have regrown, and every year there are more of them. The wetland is now a more welcome destination for Checkerspot butterflies, the Bridgewater population is booming back, and later this summer (2009) Olson hopes to seed the wetland with hundreds of caterpillars.

If all works as planned, scores of Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies will be flying around campus in June of 2010. Stay tuned for periodic Checkerspot Updates.

 

Appendix and Links

More about the Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly (Euphydryas phaeton):

Left:  Adult (wingspan approx. 1.5 inches)
Right:  Native range of Euphydryas phaeton, map scanned from the book “The Butterflies of North America” by James A. Scott (Stanford University Press, 1986)

For more photographs and natural history of the butterfly see: http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/insect.html

For an example of another restoration project, at the Baltimore Zoo, see http://users.sitestar.net/~jmfarron/Checkerspots.html

For more about the insect in Massachusetts see http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabambc/construct-species-page.asp?sp=Euphydryas-phaeton

 

More about Turtlehead (Chelone glabra):

The following quote describes the habitat preferences of the plant:

“Shade or woodland gardens. Bog gardens. Pond or water garden peripheries. Wildflower or native plant gardens. Borders as long as the soil moisture requirements can be met.”

Source of quote:  http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/Plant.asp?code=J780

For information about the native range of this plant I quote from the Peterson Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-central North America (Peterson and McKenny, 1968):  “Wet ground, streambanks.  Minnesota, Ontario, Newfoundland south.”


Source of seed:

I have purchased seeds of the wildflower Chelone glabra from the New England Wildflower Society (NEWFS), located in Framingham, MA.  This Society is one of the premier plant conservation and education organizations in the United States. NEWFS does not gather for-sale seeds from wild plant populations, instead it cultivates many wildflowers specifically for its seed sale program.

Source of caterpillars:

Caterpillars of the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly will be obtained from Mr. Don Adams, of West Bridgewater, MA.  Mr. Adams is known throughout the region as an expert butterfly and moth rearer.  He recently assisted the New England Wildflower Society in a Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly re-establishment project at its “Garden in the Woods” preserve in Framingham.  Although Don remains an amateur entomologist and ecologist, he has collaborated with professional entomologists on a number of projects, including a UMASS Amherst study of the invasive pest insect known as Winter Moth.  He has been rearing Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies on his property in West Bridgewater for the last five years.
 
A note about the project proponent:

I am an environmental scientist on the faculty of the Heller School, and I teach ecology and environmental impact assessment to students in the Sustainable International Development program.

Contact information:

Dr. Eric J. Olson, Ph.D.
Instructor of Ecology
Program in Sustainable International Development
The Heller School for Social Policy and Management
Brandeis University
Mailstop 035
Post Office Box 549110
Waltham, MA 02454-9110
781-736-8363

References:

Harvard University (2008, November 1). Wildflower Declines In Thoreau's Concord Woods Are Due To Climate Changes. Science Daily. Retrieved July 8, 2009, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174640.htm

Peterson, R.T.  1983.  Field Guide to Wildflowers.  The Peterson Field Guide Series.  Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

Scott, J.A. 1986.  The Butterflies of North America.  Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

Magee, D.A.  2006.  Freshwater Wetlands: A Guide to Common Indicator Plants of the Northeast.  University of Massachusetts Press. 

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