Dear WBA members,
As those of you who were at the March 7 meeting know, I am putting together a Master’s project related to the conservation of silver-bordered fritillary (SBF) habitat in Washington. The main thrust of this project is the effects of grazing on the SBF’s violet host plants (typically Viola palustris or V. nephrophyla); I will be setting up grazing plots and analyzing the effects of different treatments on the density/health/reproduction/etc. of the violets.
However, I also want to do some monitoring of the bug itself, and am looking for a few good WBA folks to come to eastern Washington and observe SBF’s with me for a few days during the summers of 2007 and 2008. There are two tasks I have in mind for those interested:
- Larval searches — combing through grazing plots (and elsewhere) on hands and knees looking for SBF caterpillars, recording where if anywhere they are found, and what they are eating. It is possible that the larvae are active at night rather than in the daytime, so if we don’t have any luck with this during the daytime, we may have to try again at midnight with flashlights. (I think this sounds like fun.) Optimum season for larval searches would be just before either of the flight periods, when hopefully most of the caterpillars are at a late-instar stage but haven’t pupated. I think this would be early-mid June (around the 10th, maybe) and mid-late July (around the 20th).
- Oviposition tracking — stealthily following adult female SBF’s with a pair of close-focus binoculars, tracking their every move, and recording where, when, and how, they lay eggs, and flagging plants that eggs have been laid upon/near. Optimum times to do this of course are at the peaks of the flight periods, meaning late June or early-mid August.
At least, these efforts, might provide some insights into larval biology of SBF’s in the wild, and at best, if enough larval and oviposition sightings are recorded, I might be able to detect an effect of my grazing treatments on butterfly use.
Of course my exact protocol/methodology is not clear yet, but by the time anyone showed up to help, the idea is I would have known long enough in advance to have a clear and straightforward and (hopefully) fun task ready for them.
This research will be occuring at two locations: Doheny Basin on the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) run Sinlahekin Wildlife Area, near Tonasket, and Escure Ranch, which is owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), located east of Ritzville. I’d be happy to have the help at either location.
For those who are interested, what I will do is budget mileage at $0.485/mile and per diem at $39/day + lodging for whoever is interested, on a grant proposal I am putting together. That way volunteers will be reimbursed for the cost of traveling, assuming I get the grant. Participants will be signed up as volunteers with WDFW, and maybe the BLM as well if they choose to come to Escure. I’m hoping to know how many people are coming for how long by about the middle of March, so I have time to budget their travel before my grant application in due.
I think it would be an adventure: chasing female SBFs with binoculars all around the swamp; crawling around on hands and knees at night with a flashlight looking for caterpillars.
Tighe Stuart
Port Angeles, WA
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