Reasons for the change in the number of swallowtails

Isn't this from the "When the Trees Were Big" series?
Swallowtail was always a common species in the steppe zone of Ukraine, always clearly 3 generations.
the population, like that of any other species, fluctuates, but not in the way you describe. All given data is subjective, more is less, big is small. You just have observations that may not completely coincide with the observations of the other person.
So. What I think is a personal or very local mystery.

I approach such things quite responsibly. Anticipating answers like yours, I immediately assured that the data were objective (to a certain extent, of course, because there was no exact quantitative accounting), obviously in vain. This is guaranteed to be out of the wrong series.. By the way, if you read the text carefully, you noticed that " the trees began to grow again." In my opinion, a serious argument against your hypothesis. Well, unless I began to fall into childhood. The steppe zone of Ukraine is large, where exactly did you monitor the swallowtail? For example, in the Seversky Donets Valley, where I regularly visited, the swallowtail was found consistently, even in the years of its "complete disappearance" in Donetsk. Waiting for other explanations.

I remember that in the second half of the 90s I met swallowtails in Donetsk regularly in very large numbers. Often, when you looked out of the window, it would circle around the tops of the pyramidal poplars planted along the roadway. A dozen could be seen in the water belt at a time. And the size was impressive. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the population began to fall sharply, and the specimens themselves began to grow smaller. From 2005 to 2009, I didn't see a single one at all. In 2010, there was only one small spring generation, and that was far from the city blocks. In 2011-again zero. In 2012-again one small one, also in the spring, the same outside the city. In the spring of 2013, I saw several copies at once, and already large ones. But also far away in the fields. From that moment on, I met them every year, but only in the spring, in April, and only away from the city. The size of the individuals returned to what it was in the 90s. But I didn't see a single one from the summer generation, although before the disappearance, there were probably more butterflies in August and September than in April. Here is such a riddle. I can assure you that my data is objective, as I regularly visit the field every year, and my observation skills are good. So the strongest decline in the number took place. There were no problems with forage plants, and a variety of umbrella plants, both wild and cultivated, are plentiful. I have heard a version about the harmful influence of dry grass falls (in the last ten years, bad people arrange them every spring). But then the first generation would suffer more, not the second. Insecticides are also disappearing, they were just sprayed right and left in the 90s, and then agriculture in the surrounding fields gradually almost died out. The dynamics are similar in the industry related to toxic emissions.

So the riddle is on your face. Have you seen this in other places? Does anyone have an explanation?

Ezox, but did the swallowtails just so circle on the tops of poplars? Didn't you file a complaint? Chet, I've never seen swallowtails from my window, although there are a lot of podaliris, just as they like to fly in the crowns of trees, including in the city itself there are a lot of podaliris, which is understandable - their food plants are available in large quantities in the city.

Swallowtails feed on umbrella plants, and in the city they simply cannot develop a large number, they are found only in flight, while outside the city the number of swallowtails seems to have always been more or less stable.
Here I do not go to the fields, but in the steppe in the summer I saw quite a few swallowtails, and even took a picture of them))

We have in New Kakhovka as. The city is suffering from development. It is necessary for some businessman to cut down any public garden, any piece of sandy steppe and build a store there. This can not but negatively affect the number of ordinary butterflies. But as for swallowtails, even if you go out in the city to the sands, you can find a lot of them. But it also depends on the time of year. Indeed, I saw a lot of them in our city sands on 30.08.13. In the spring of the same year, I saw a lot in the steppe. I also saw a lot in 2014. This year, it somehow seemed that it was smaller. The last time I was in the steppe was 20.07-I didn't see any of them. Probably now they have a caterpillar period.

This post was edited by Wave Storm - 31.07.2015 19: 22

I don't see any mystery or problem... Everything is fine with the swallowtail in the area. And in Donetsk itself, too. Natural population fluctuations in different years do not count. Every year it is found, in the city too-caterpillars often develop in vegetable gardens on dill and fennel. In 2010-2011, it was particularly numerous.

Here in Yenakiyevo, which is a 40-minute drive from Donetsk, everything was fine with swallowtails until 2013 (including 2013). The largest number was in 2010-2011, up to 15 pieces per hour in the steppe only in one place and very locally. After 2013, I don't know .
The lowest number in 2008.
In principle, there is no problem . The swallowtail biotope is steppe, not urban expanses. Moreover, there are clearly more forage plants in the steppe part than in the urban part. And fluctuations in the number can be for various reasons.

But it is swallowtails, because they are very different in color. These caterpillars feed only on umbrella plants, while adults feed on a lot of other things. And they quite like to climb to the treetops, this year I also saw this (although not in the city and not near poplars, but in a beam above the oaks). From a distance, you can probably confuse lemongrass with swallowtail and then hardly. Also, opposite the main entrance to the 29th cemetery, there is a forest belt, the trees were already quite high. There, on May 9, for several years dozens of swallowtails were curled up in a row at once, and I remember that none of them descended to the height of an elongated net. Since the mid-2000s ( in the same numbers) - zero. Swallowtails in residential areas and a couple of hundred meters away on the so-called Rutchenkovsky field (not over the tops of poplars, of course) were caught by my father and I, you can definitely not confuse the copy. And they caught a lot, even though they didn't really know how to catch then. Butterflies were used to catch swallowtails, podalirias, lemongrass, peacock's eyes, some yellowheads, and, in my opinion, everything. Once I got polyxena and for a long time I considered it a mega-novelty, until I started visiting the right places at the right time. There was not a single admiral in that collection, not a single pandora, not a single polychrome. It is clear that this is not in nature they were not, we are such hunters were. Nevertheless, swallowtails came across in numbers. I remember playing with dried butterflies of this type as paper airplanes as a child (sorry for such stupidity). Now, despite the fact that I wander a lot on rather remote gullies (or rather, I wandered a lot before the war), I can count meetings with a swallowtail in a year on the fingers of one hand, and all in the spring. Catch even the hand does not rise, just take pictures:

[attachmentid()=232330]

Well, how did yellowheads, peacock eyes and other butterflies not reduce their numbers at this time?
It would be possible to assume that those same garden parasol plants were especially strongly poisoned at that time on personal plots inside the city and along the edges, or used insecticides during the flowering of fruit trees that led to the extinction of spring brood in the city, but you need to know the features of the ethology of swallowtails - the tendency to fly away from the breeding sites, and the average radius of this, proximity of natural foci, total population throughout Donetsk, it is large, etc.

Dear ENO, despite your rather assertive tone, which I consider unacceptable for a scientist, I will still answer.

Yes, I have enough information about the distribution and abundance of P. machaon in Donetsk and the region, including by the end of the 90s. The abundance of the species is not constant and varies significantly in different years, which is confirmed both by observations and by the actual collection material collected by various entomologists.
As mentioned above (and not only by me), the last" outbreak " of the swallowtail population in the Donetsk region was observed in 2010-2011. During this period, up to 3-5 adults were recorded per kilometer of the route. We are talking about Kalininsky, Voroshilovsky, Kievsky and Leninsky districts, as well as Makeyevka. Certainly not about the central streets, but about bayraks, parks, settled areas, etc. The number of caterpillars in the middle of summer sometimes reached 3 individuals per plant. If desired, they could be collected up to 30-40 pieces per day. Similar" outbreaks " of population occurred in the 90s.
Argumentation in the style of "in childhood there were many and large, but now there are few and small" is excusable for an amateur who is unfamiliar with entomology, and it is not a scientific argument.

Regarding the assumption that I'm not being observant, let me give you some good advice: keep an eye on what you write and to whom. The forum is read by a lot of people, and a scientific reputation is very difficult to earn, and extremely easy to spoil. Your style of communication, especially as shown in the "meat grinder duel" with Hierophis, will end up going against you.

Dear Shtil, however, there is a dispute "Your words against my eyes". Guess whose opinion is more authoritative for me. I am not talking about random fluctuations in the population size between years, but about its directed decline over a number of years, and then-about an increase, so far small. Such phenomena in nature have specific causes, even if they are not always easy to establish. If you keep a record of the population of a species within the time period I specified, then in order not to be unfounded, please share specific statistical data, unless, of course, they are classified. Based on what you have said, so far I can make several logical explanations for the phenomenon I have described:
1. I lie all the time, and I didn't go anywhere at all, I never paid attention to swallowtails. As far as I understand, you have come to this conclusion. Well, no one can take away a person's right to be deceived. I know exactly how far this explanation is from reality.
2. I went blind in the first half of the 2000s, but now I'm starting to see again. But, it seems, ophthalmologists did not notice this. And me too.
3. On the territory of Donetsk, the species is distributed very unevenly, and the number in different localities also varies very unevenly. In this case, the reasons for this unevenness are interesting. A competent specialist would be interested in such information (even if they do not consider it 100% reliable), instead of stubbornly dismissing and denying it.

Ezox, I also recommended you to cut down the front sight to keep in mind that first, unlike me, you associate yourself with science-as a state system, I don't care, I've never suffered like this, and there are rules )
And secondly, regardless of whether you are in the system or just a naturalist, there is also the "scientific method", which is the same everywhere, except that being "in the system" sometimes you can push things that do not correspond to the scientific method

See what happens when you write:

Roma, there are no butterfly meters. There are route and transect methods, but all of them are more or less subjective, since the result strongly depends on the accountant. Therefore, in this case, we can only talk about conditional, relative objectivity. Of course, my accounting method, if I may say so, is obviously less objective than the Shtil method (whatever it may be), but nevertheless it is incomparably more objective than the method " I went out once on the lawn in 2002 - there was a large swallowtail, I went out in 2004-a small swallowtail, and in the end, I went out on the lawn once in 2002 - there was a large swallowtail, 2005-no swallowtail)". That's not what I meant, Roma. And if I say "they began to grow smaller", it means that for several years in a row only small swallowtails came across. That's how "small swallowtails" are, not "one particular swallowtail", as you think. Yes, I don't have quantitative data in numbers, but I do have qualitative data like "a lot", "a little", and "not visible at all". Here-such subjectively separated categorical data are used, in particular, by accurate methods of statistics of non-numerical values, and by no one (from among competent specialists) it has not yet occurred to me to consider them inadequate and subjective.

Roma, it is very symptomatic of the change in your behavior in this topic, from a completely cultural proposal of an interesting hypothesis at the beginning, to sharp tactless ridicule at the end. What has changed? But only one thing: the user Shtil in this interval expressed his unfounded "authoritative opinion". And then you hurried to join in. The pack effect.

This post was edited by ENO-01.08.2015 13: 29

Roma. there are no butterfly meters. There are route and transect methods, but all of them are more or less subjective, since the result strongly depends on the accountant. Therefore, in this case, we can only talk about conditional and relative objectivity. Of course, if I may say so, my accounting method is less objective than the Shtil method (whatever it may be), but nevertheless it is incomparably more objective than the method " I went out once on the lawn in 2002-there was a large swallowtail, I went out in 2004-a small swallowtail, and in 2005 - no swallowtail)". That's not what I meant, Roma. And if I say "they began to grow smaller", it means that for several years in a row only small swallowtails came across. That's how "small swallowtails" are, not "one particular swallowtail", as you think. Yes, I don't have quantitative data in numbers, but I do have qualitative data like "a lot", "average", and "a little". Here-such subjectively separated categorical data are used, in particular, by accurate methods of statistics of non-numerical values, and by no one (from among competent specialists) it has not yet occurred to me to consider them inadequate and subjective.

Roma, it is very symptomatic of the change in your behavior in this topic, from a completely cultural proposal of an interesting hypothesis at the beginning, to sharp tactless ridicule at the end. What has changed? But only one thing: the user Shtil in this interval expressed his unfounded "authoritative opinion". And then you hurried to join in. The pack effect.

Easy offtop: Roma, why the hell do you have Crimea listed as your place of residence (regardless of whether "this is Ukraine" or something else)? Have you ever been there?"

Ilya, in principle, everything is clear with you. Keep spitting in the wells...

And if I say "they began to grow smaller", it means that for several years in a row only small swallowtails came across. That's how "small swallowtails" are, not "one particular swallowtail", as you think.

Esox.. I don't think so, I read it

Well, if I saw only one person in a year, this is just quantitative data. Two years in a row-or two years in a row-it is quite possible that it is a coincidence. But about grinding, I did not write about these small ones, but about those that were even before the "disappearance". There was not one piece a year, but much more (unfortunately, accurate quantitative data has not been preserved), all as one-small.

Ezox, listen, do you think to answer questions on the topic of swallowtails proper? ))
What a sacrifice!)

Perhaps I'll also throw off one of the observation maps for Enakiev, where you can clearly see where there are a lot of them. I am 200% sure that if there was an opportunity to go there now, then on the way along the railway lane up to the place that I call "Valley of Swallowtails" you can always find up to 5 pieces easily . By the way, this map will consist of a database that I personally write in html, and then reprogram in PHP, but that's another story .

Pictures:

____.jpg — (95.87к)

Hmm, what's the glitch and where's the thank you button gone? I'll just say it in words: Nick444444, thank you for declassifying the point, but this is more likely to be useful for Shtil, I don't collect swallowtails. And in the context of my question, this only means that everything is fine in Yenakiyevo with swallowtails, I'm happy for you.

  
By what I saw, and Shtil did not, I did not mean the swallowtails themselves (I think everyone has seen them at least once in their lives), but a significant decline in their numbers over a certain period of many years. Is your cognitive dissonance now removed?
And in what units will the result be measured in? Copies of the species per entomologist's copy? The main thing is to remember to correct for the amount of breast milk taken before the expedition, and then yes, it will be absolutely objective.
Since it comes to maps, I enclose my own, if I may say so. research area and meeting points with swallowtails (from memory, I don't have any zepees). By the way, I checked my data and found out that I lied a little at first: in 2010 I saw two swallowtails, both in spring and both small. My apologies. But no one, not even some hypothetical his Majesty okodemig okodemii makhaonykh nauk, will make me see what I reliably observed, namely, a sharp decline in the population that took place between the beginning of the two thousandth and tenth (and until now it is far from its former values) with a minimum in the area of 2005 in this area. The fact that the red and blue zones are so small can only be explained by the fact that I didn't go any further in those years. Still, I've seen a LOT more swallowtails than I do now.

The author of the topic hears only himself.
I will specify my first post:

This is from the series "When trees were big"
All the data given is subjective.
So I think it's a personal mystery.

  
swallowtail is an object of scientific interest for you, not me, and any new data about it should be interesting

All the data provided is subjective.

Not interesting!

My question is here...

So the riddle is on your face. Have you seen this in other places? Does anyone have an explanation?

What is the mystery? In fluctuations in the number of species in different time periods? If yes, then this is common for many types of butterflies. The reasons can be excess moisture or drought, parasitoids, or something else. But, unfortunately, I do not know about the research of this phenomenon.
Butterflies of small size are obtained from underfed caterpillars (during a drought, for example).
Feeding preferences of the Swallowtail in the Crimea (according to personal observations) - zhabritsa and yasenets.

okoem, thank you for not falling for this "big trees"story. I agree. long-term fluctuations in the population size are a natural phenomenon and very common (even my polists have such a case), but still the situation with the swallowtail is special in that the species from the area I indicated almost disappeared for several years. And next time, maybe even completely. And that would be very unfortunate. And so many interesting species of insects, which in the past were quite common, have disappeared from our territory, from the steppe fat man to the steppe bumblebee. And there is a possibility, albeit relatively small, that such a narrow - scale disappearance of the swallowtail for several years is, so to speak, the first bell, the initial phase of a larger process. And it would be very nice to find out the reason, so that if the phenomenon begins to take on a large scale, stop the process in the bud. You can, of course, treat the Red Books differently (in the last issue of the Ukrainian version, they didn't think of skutiger at all, they just forgot about Prusak), but here's the swallowtail... I remember then, in the 90s, they gave me some kind of children's book where there was a good color photo of a swallowtail with an indication that it was entered in the CC of either the Russian Federation or the Moscow region, and I was surprised for a long time, because at that time we had these butterflies like dirt... But only a few years have passed and the situation has changed radically (even if some participants in this conversation, for some obviously weighty reasons, do not notice this point-blank). So I'm worried, I'm worried...

We definitely don't have an ash tree, but there are enough stallions, and the depression of its population in these years, it seems, was not. So there couldn't have been any food problems. But there could be a problem with the death of pupae from fire: those places where the stallion grows, in recent years, fall out every spring. And cultivated plants in vegetable gardens, as suggested by Hierophis, can be sprayed with insecticide. Although do they process dill? "I still have my doubts about that. But assuming that yes. It turns out such an unpleasant picture: in the spring, from a few caterpillars untouched by fire, a small number of butterflies are born, which I observe. Some females lay eggs on garden plants. There, the caterpillars mostly die as a result of spring treatment with pesticides. But the other part lays eggs on the stallion, which by the beginning or middle of April already has time to recover from the fire, and its thickets are quite extensive. Therefore, there should be no fewer butterflies in the summer than in the spring. And there are fewer of them. Rather, their number is below the limit of detection by what some here consider to be the "subjectively incorrect" method of walking through fields and gullies with your eyes open. Therefore, there is some factor that is not included in the model described above. Or even it's the only one that matters.

okoem, can I learn more about parasitoids? Do they specialize only in swallowtail, or do they have a wide range of hosts? If the former, then this option is not possible, since after such a serious decline in the number of swallowtails, which took place from 2005 to 2009, the parasitoid population would have had a very bad time, and we should expect a sharp increase in the number of swallowtails at the end of this period, and not what we have now. But if there are other hosts, for example, polyxena or podalirii, whose population remained fairly stable at that time, then they could serve as a reservoir, and in this case the parasitoid hypothesis is quite viable (if you only add the reason for the initial surge in their population). Similarly with infectious and invasive diseases.

We have an ash tree, Dictamnus gymnostylis... And on the territory of Donetsk as well...

Actually, the mystery lies, based on what they have written, in the fact that the author of the topic has a strong decline in the number of swallowtails in the "summer" period, with some occurrence in the spring. At the same time, other participants point to a high number of swallowtails in 2010-11.

IMHO, this can be explained as follows. In spring, the first generation of swallowtails is often found on flowering trees, acc. it is more likely to meet a butterfly while in the suburbs.
In summer and autumn, subsequent generations of butterflies are distributed over the flowering mixed grasses of fragments of virgin steppes and deposits, and the probability of meeting decreases sharply.

Therefore, I will assume that the only significant factor here is the insufficient volume of observations, both in time and distance.
The observed area indicated by Ezox is about 6X2 km in size, with a significant part of it occupied by buildings and woodlands, and only a small part by deposits and possibly virgin land. This is a very bad area to observe )

We celebrate the same thing - in the spring, swallowtails can be found right under the house, but in the summer - I don't remember to come across

Shtil, thank you for the information And where exactly in Donetsk does it grow? And have you ever seen swallowtail caterpillars on it? More often or less often than on dill and fennel?

Roma, you wrote a complete piece of garbage. In general, I have never met a swallowtail feeding on the flowers of a tree (in the last 10 years, for sure, and even earlier, it seems, only on herbs). Further, if you flexed your logical muscle at least a little (it is sometimes useful so as not to atrophy), you would realize that the house of cards of your own conclusions collapsed before the construction was completed. After all, I clearly wrote (and showed on the map) that in recent years I have been meeting swallowtails only in the spring and only away from city blocks. That is, both of these conditions at once, Roma! And in the 90s, I just met more butterflies of the summer generation, including in the city. That's it. So Chukchi is clearly a writer. And in this very "very bad area", for example, I met in quantity such plants that you search for all your life in your" Gilean deserts " unsuccessfully, do not find, and, most likely, will never find. "And perhaps virgin land", exactly. Although very local, some botanists have enough for copious drooling. Here with animals it is worse, they love space (even such small ones as insects). Although with this war, there will soon be plenty of space...

This post was edited by ENO-03.08.2015 00: 58

After all, I clearly wrote (and showed on the map) that in recent years I have been meeting swallowtails only in the spring and only away from city blocks.

.. I've seen a lot of plants that you've been searching for all your life in your "Gilean deserts" without success, but you don't find them, and most likely you'll never find them.

Is that what you call far away??
If you met them at least in those gullies that are 5 km below the circle on the map, it would still come off )
For some reason, in the spring, I see a lot of swallowtails in such places , in the suburbs, they often sit on the ground, but also feed on fruit trees.

And what kind of plants are these, and in what quantity? )

"Far away" is a relative term, for some it is a kilometer, and for others it is a thousand. But for some reason, even large animals (foxes, hares, buzzards, harriers, etc.), consider this area quite remote from the urban development blocks, and quite live there. Do you think swallowtails should avoid flying even further away? Straight, some black storks come out, not swallowtails. Did they have different beliefs in the ' 90s? Then, I remind you, you could see them from the window - this, I understand, is close.

About the plant that you've been looking for all the time without success, and we have at least a slanting braid of it, have you forgotten already? Thin-leaved peony! But there are other plants there, much rarer, which were previously searched for by Donetsk botanists hundreds of kilometers away and entered into the regional CC with the status of "disappearing". And the biggest riot of rarities for some reason is in the beam closest to the city, which is rather nondescript and modest in its scale. And in the more remote ones, which I also climbed a lot, there is a solid banality both in flora and fauna. Here is a paradox.

In other words, in Donetsk, I found yasenets in the Kalmius floodplain (from Gladkovka to the former Lenkom), as well as on the territory of the Botanical Garden and its surroundings (Stavkov cascade). I used to be in Balki near the Donetsk Sea , but I don't know now. I didn't find any swallowtail caterpillars on it. From our food plants exactly: fennel and dill, wild carrots, stallions. On fennel there are large numbers, but, as I said above, the number varies significantly in different years.

Thin-leaved peony!

Well, hello!
Skazazt that I'm looking for such a plant, it's all true that skazazt that I'm looking for rafflesia here, but it's still not there
And you have thyme Dnieper and golosemyannik Odessa look )))

What does rafflesia have to do with it? Have you forgotten your map?



I've already shown it to you this year! There is a peony in your area, or rather, it was. But it looks like your ancestors smoked it all, and you still have to smoke thyme and gymnosperm. But the discussion of local flora, regardless of the swallowtail diet , is a wild offtop and I do not participate in it further.

This post was edited by ENO-03.08.2015 02: 34

Smoking thyme is definitely pointless (although no one has checked Dnipro yet, you never know))).

It is precisely the science itself that is very bad in our country

Especially the one that is ecology, this is constantly being talked about on the zomboyashchik :D

.. about parasitoids? Do they specialize only in swallowtail, or do they have a wide range of hosts?

Rather the second. But this question is best asked by connoisseurs of taheen and riders.

Especially the one that is ecology, this is constantly being talked about on the zomboyashchik: D

And they say it correctly. Only history is worse than ecology,... especially the story about 96.7 percent

especially the story about 96.7 percent

And you don't have any brains left to read without smoking, just like many of your "friends". Sorry...