Wildlife

Butterflies in danger of global warming

Research by a University of B.C. student on 48,000 individual butterflies through more than a century of records found global warming causes them to emerge from hibernation earlier.

Heather Kharouba said Wednesday butterflies that wake from hibernation too quickly could run into sudden cold snaps or — if their feeding plants aren’t in bloom — die from lack of food. Her research examined samples of butterflies from 1880 to now, comparing the creatures with weather station data over the course of 130 years.

She found that every time the mercury rises one degree Celsius, butterflies take flight 2.4 days earlier — an accelerating trend in recent years.

“They could hit an early frost and just get killed,” Kharouba said. “Or their host plants might not come out yet and they might not have food and they might starve.”

Her research was published Tuesday in the Journal of Global Change Biology. She said the next steps include determining if the food plants are blooming faster with the temperature rise.

One problem is the lack of butterfly data in Canada, she said, adding websites such as bcbutterflyatlas.ca are attempting to engage the community by getting the public to snap photos of butterflies and record where they’re found.