This Butterfly Was the First in North America That People Made Extinct
New research suggests the iconic Xerces blue butterfly may have been its own species.
The 93-year-old Xerces blue butterfly specimen, located in the collections of the Field Museum in Chicago, used in the study.Credit.The Field Museum
July 21, 2021
More than a century ago, a bluish butterfly flitted among the sand dunes of the Sunset District in San Francisco and laid its eggs on a plant known as deerweed. As the city’s development overtook the dunes and deerweed, the butterflies vanished, too. The last Xerces blue butterfly was collected in 1941 from Lobos Creek by an entomologist who would later lament that he had killed what was one of the last living members of the species.
A famous blue butterfly: Still extinct but more distinct
A collections drawer of extinct Xerces blue butterflies at the Field Museum in Chicago. New research suggests the iconic Xerces blue butterfly may have been its own species. The Field Museum via The New York Times.
by Sabrina Imbler
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- More than a century ago, a bluish butterfly flitted among the sand dunes of the Sunset District in San Francisco and laid its eggs on a plant known as deerweed. As the citys development overtook the dunes and deerweed, the butterflies vanished, too. The last Xerces blue butterfly was collected in 1941 from Lobos Creek by an entomologist who would later lament that he had killed what was one of the last living members of the species.
Credit: Field Museum
The Xerces blue butterfly was last seen flapping its iridescent periwinkle wings in San Francisco in the early 1940s. It s generally accepted to be extinct, the first American insect species destroyed by urban development, but there are lingering questions about whether it was really a species to begin with, or just a sub-population of another common butterfly. In a new study in
Biology Letters, researchers analyzed the DNA of a 93-year-old Xerces blue specimen in museum collections, and they found that its DNA is unique enough to merit being considered a species. The study confirms that yes, the Xerces blue really did go extinct, and that insect conservation is something we have to take seriously.
Was the elegy misguided?
The Xerces status as a distinct species, as opposed to being a sub-population of another non-extinct butterfly, has been questioned by some for decades.
In a new study published in Biology Letters, researchers at the Field Museum were able to put a definitive end to those doubts, confirming that the Xerces blue was indeed a unique species, albeit one now also confirmed as extinct.
“It’s interesting to reaffirm that what people have been thinking for nearly 100 years is true, that this was a species driven to extinction by human activities,” said Felix Grewe, co-director of the Field’s Grainger Bioinformatics Center and the lead author of the Biology Letters paper on the project.