Saving an Ontario butterfly

Posted onAugust 8, 2024byGriffyn Leyshon|Mottled Duskywing Butterfly, Native Pollinator Initiative, News and Events

Photo above: Jessica Linton

WPC is working to bring the mottled duskywing butterfly back to Ontario as part of the Ontario Butterfly Species at Risk Team. Together, we are spearheading an innovative effort to reintroduce the duskywing to Pinery Provincial Park in southwestern Ontario, the first reintroduction of its kind in Ontario. The program began in 2021, and celebrated its fourth year of monitoring on May 6th, 2024. Incredibly, the reintroduced population at Pinery has reverted to two generations of adults throughout the summer. This year, Griffyn Leyson joins the monitoring team at Pinery to conduct a new survey method called distance sampling and described a day in the life of the mottled duskywing field crew, May 10, 2024.

The sweet call of ovenbirds drifting through the forest was enough to wake me from my sleep. Rolling out of bed, I glanced out of the window to see a bright morning unfolding. Clear, crisp, and sunny, it was looking like the ideal conditions for butterfly activity.

In addition to the typical excitement that comes from good weather, today was an especially exciting day for another reason. Today was the first time our team would be going into the field to implement a new survey method for our crew called distance sampling.

What is distance sampling? The goal is to record the density or abundance of populations within suitable patches of habitat. For our program, this is achieved by walking a series of parallel lines that run through areas where duskywings are known to inhabit because their larval foodplants, New Jersey tea and prairie redroot, occur in abundance. Any duskywing species that land across our path are noted, along with the distance they were first spotted from the imaginary line on which we stand. This technique has been modified from other studies to provide better estimates than traditional, more intensive techniques like marking butterflies, on the population size of mottled duskywings.

After packing our gear and applying a thorough coat of sunscreen, the team and I jumped on our bikes and headed out to our first site of the day. Along the way, we were greeted by the cheery melodies of eastern towhees in the roadside shrubs and the burry calls of scarlet tanagers in the forest around us. With high hopes, we arrived at our first sampling transect of the day.

Scarlet tanager welcomes the morning as the team begins our surveys for mottled duskywing

After placing our bikes behind a bush, we unpacked our gear, which included a marked aluminum pole used to estimate the distance of butterflies from the observer and, of course, our butterfly nets. We then aligned ourselves to the correct route via GPS and set out for our first sample of the day!

Within a matter of only minutes, we encountered our first butterfly of the day!

Anxiously, the whole team waited as the butterfly was caught and carefully extracted from the net to get a closer look.

Gently inspecting a mottled duskywing butterfly during surveys before carefully releasing it back to the Pinery.

After the butterfly was extracted, it was placed in a clear vial for easier observation. We began twisting and turning the vial to get a better look at the coloration and patterning of the wings.

Our hopes peaked as we saw flashes of purple on the forewings. This was our first mottled duskywing during distance sampling!

Excitably, we all took out our phones to grab a picture of what was to be the first of many mottled duskywings we would see during the day.

The northern lights viewed from the team’s campsite

Getting to be a part of this project is a dream come true. In 2019, my family sold our cottage, located at the south end of the Pinery on a small strip of land locally referred to as “Chicken Island.” For 18 years, I spent every summer here enjoying the idyllic sunsets and rolling dunes. There is perhaps no place on earth as special to me as the Pinery.

But little did I know that my connection to the Pinery would be rekindled this summer in the most amazing way.

As a child, I knew I wanted to work to help conserve nature, but never in my wildest dream did I think I would be so fortunate as to contribute to the conservation of an endangered species in my childhood backyard.

Participating firsthand in the mottled duskywing butterfly recovery process and seeing tangible results is a feeling that I will never forget.

It is a privilege to be able to contribute to not just a monumental conservation effort, but a successful one in a place so special to me and my family.

While the work itself is incredibly rewarding, there are many other perks about living in the Pinery! The amount of nature you get to see during fieldwork is amazing. In one day we saw a female eastern milksnake, a rogue mottled duskywing who made it to our campsite, and later that evening, the northern lights!

Being part of this project is a dream come true in every sense of the word.

Griffyn Leyshon

2024 Crew – Mottled Duskywing Pinery Reintroduction Program at Pinery

Griffyn Leyshon is a Environmental & Resource Science student at Trent University. In the past he has worked for local conservation authorities, as well as a research station in Belize. Passionate about all forms of biodiversity, Griffyn hopes to further his education in graduate school, and continue working on projects related to species-at-risk.