Massachusetts Butterfly Club

                        * * * * 30 Years!!!! * * * *
The Massachusetts Butterfly Club is celebrating our 30th year! To see a brief history of the club and how it began, click here.

                        ***   Save the date!   ***

The Fall Meeting of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club will be held via Zoom Saturday, November 13, 2021, from 6:30 - 9:00 pm.

Our guest speaker will be James Michielini, who will present Changing With The Climate: How Butterflies Respond To The Warming World.

From our speaker: There are innumerable predictions attempting to describe how ecosystems might change under projected climate scenarios. To be accurate, these predictions require an intimate understanding of the mechanisms regulating species' responses to a changing climate. My research focuses on changes in butterfly populations and the mechanisms driving those trends. I began by investigating the degree to which changes in seasonality related to abundance trends in butterfly species across Massachusetts. We found that species which elongated their flight activity within the year increased in abundance relative to species which showed no changes in their seasonal timing. This disparity in population trends was most pronounced among species with different geographic ranges, suggesting that species from the south may be shifting their range northwards. I am currently studying a likely range expander, the Pipevine swallowtail, to uncover the mechanisms that may facilitate such range shifts under climate change. Better understanding these mechanisms will hopefully allow us to not only forecast changes in butterfly populations in the future, but also develop conservation strategies that will mitigate the negative effects of climate change.

James Michielini is a graduate student in Dr. Elizabeth Crone's Lab in the Department of Biology at Tufts University. He graduated from Tufts in 2019 and completed an undergraduate thesis studying the relationship between phenology and relative abundance in Massachusetts Butterflies. He continued working on his thesis work at Tufts where he began as a graduate student last year. He currently studies the potential effects of climate change on the range distribution and population dynamics of the Pipevine Swallowtail Battus philenor.

We’ll finish the evening off with a celebration of butterfly PHOTOS taken by club members. Show up to 20 slides or digital photos that represent highlights from the field in during 2021. If you wish to show your slides, contact Dave Small at dave@atholbirdclub.org.

You must register in order to receive the meeting link. Members will be contacted via email. Guests may contact Barbara Volkle at barbara@massbutterflies.org for the registration link.

            Guests are welcome!

September 8, 2021 - The Many Mysteries of the Monarch
    An article in the Boston Globe by Don Lyman features interviews with MBC members Martha Gach and Madeline Champagne.
        Click here to download the article.
    Also, here is a link to a related article on the Journey North website. The Monarch's Forest Ecosystem

The Massachusetts Butterfly Club sponsors state-wide butterfly activities to promote education, conservation, interpretation, and fun! We invite people of all ages and levels of expertise to attend our meetings, programs, field trips, and butterfly counts and to become members of our club.

If you care about our butterflies and the club's efforts to support them, please consider making a donation to our club.
Click on this link to see how you can donate.
Another way you can help is to use Amazon Smile for your Amazon purchases and name our club as the charity. See below for information on how to do that.

                  *****  Butterflying Code of Ethics  *****
The Massachusetts Butterfly Club has adopted a Butterflying Code of Ethics. You can find the document under Club Information on the left menu.

Sign up to get e-mail from Massachusetts butterfly enthusiasts!

If you wish to receive periodic e-mail messages about butterflies in Massachusetts and to report your own butterfly sightings, consider joining the MassLep list server. Butterfly watchers from around the state send messages listing the butterflies they see, describing butterfly behavior, posing questions, and answering them. Joining the list server is a great way to find out what's flying and to get to know others who share your interests!

If you have problems with subscribing or unsubscribing to the MassLep list server, send an email to the list server monitor.

    *****  Report your sightings to our Records Compiler   *****

If you do not report your sightings on MassLep or Facebook and would like to report your sightings to our records compiler directly, you can download the spreadsheet below and email to Mark Fairbrother at mark@massbutterflies.org.

            Sightings Report spreadsheet

Note: Please DO NOT use this form if you report your sightings on MassLep or Facebook.

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