Maine needs butterfly surveyors

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Lev Bely, 24.05.2012 21:07

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is to teach state residents how to identify butterflies. Everyone is welcome to join a special butterfly identification training that starts off this June. Those who will take part are also supposed to contribute to the statewide butterfly survey.

There are actually at least 120 butterfly species in Maine, but, as spokesman Doug Rafferty says, the state has only a rudimentary knowledge of them compared to neighboring states and provinces, including Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Brunswick, which have compiled butterfly atlases.

Phillip deMaynadier, a state wildlife biologist, hopes that after this training at Colby College in Waterville in which he himself is engaged as a volunteer trainer, people in their turn could help the major annual survey.

DeMaynadier says that the point is to unite both volunteers' help and the efforts of more than 100 citizen scientists to get survey more profound and with most accurate data possible.

The Morning Sentinel, http://www.onlinesentinel.com

Photo: Danaus plexippus butterfly is feeding on a verbena flower in some garden in Portland (Maine), Jack Milton, http://www.onlinesentinel.com

Danaus plexippus butterflies are having a rest on Prout's Neck peninsula (Maine) in the course of southward migration