Papillon

Butterflies! opens this Saturday, May 27, where you can check out over 25 North American species. Brookfield Zoo's seasonal exhibit (located just west of the Carousel near the North Gate) will feature more pathways and water features, along with a new pupa room so that you can get an up-close look at pupae before they emerge as adults.

There are approximately 20,000 species of butterflies in the world. About 725 species have occurred in North American north of Mexico, with about 575 of these occurring regularly in the lower 48 states of the United States, and with about 275 species occurring regularly in Canada. Roughly 2000 species are found in Mexico.

In most parts of the United States, you can find roughly 100 species of butterflies near your home. The number is higher in the Rio Grande Valley and some parts of the West, somewhat less in New England. As one goes northward into Canada the number decreases, while as one goes southward into Mexico the number greatly increases.

Most adult butterflies drink nectar from flowers through their tongues, which function much like straws. A minority of butterflies almost never visits flowers, instead gaining sustenance from tree sap, rotting animal matter, and other organic material. Butterfly caterpillars almost all eat plant matter. Mainly the caterpillars eat leaves, but some species eat seeds and seed pods while others specialize on flowers. Most species will eat only a small group of related plant species -- for example Pearl Crescent caterpillars will eat species of asters. Some species, such as Gray Hairstreaks, will eat a wide variety of plants and some will eat only a single plant species. Although they eat plants, very few butterfly caterpillars are agricultural pests and if caterpillars are destroying some of your garden plants, it is unlikely that they are butterflies (unless you planted those plants specifically to attract butterflies). The caterpillar of one North American butterfly,the Harvester, eats aphids.

...and an interesting fact about butterflies - they have chemoreceptors at the ends of their antennas and on the bottoms of their "feet" which enable them to smell.

If you're looking to learn more about butterflies, Brookfield Zoo Library recommends:
An obsession with butterflies: our long love affair with a singular insect by Sharman Apt Russell/ QL 544.R87 2003
Butterflies: how to identify them and attract them to your garden by Marcus Schneck/ QL542.S36 1990
Field Guide to Butterflies of Illinois by John K. Bouseman/ QL 551.I3.B68 2001
Flying flowers: the beauty of the butterfly by Rick Sammon/ QL 542.S36 2004
Other titles available in the SWAN catalog: http://swan.sls.lib.il.us

Butterflies of North America (USGS)
Children's Butterfly Site (USGS)
Electronic Resources on Lepidoptera
Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network
North American Butterfly Organization (NABA)

New Orleans Public Library Book Pledge: Tax Deductible Contribution

Brookfield Zoo Library often purchases books from Powell's for our collection. Powell's roots began in Chicago, where Michael Powell, as a University of Chicago graduate student, opened his first bookstore in 1970. Encouraged by friends and professors, including novelist Saul Bellow, Michael borrowed $3,000 to assume a lease on a bookstore. The venture proved so successful that he managed to repay the loan within two months. Today, you can browse their online store at www.powells.com for new and used titles.

Be part of Powells.com's fundraising drive to help rebuild the New Orleans Public Library. Your contribution will put books and educational materials back into the hands of New Orleans families!

How It Works:
Purchase a book pledge (or pledges) for $8.95 each.

Suggest a book for the New Orleans Public Library collection during the check-out process.

Your pledge is delivered to the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, a 501(c)(3) educational and charitable organization whose mission is to support the New Orleans Public Library.

Donors will receive an email confirmation from Powells.com and, subsequently, a letter acknowledging their tax deductible contribution from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation.

For more information, visit Powells online.

What Lies Beneath: Researchers Explore Gulf Floor

When most people think of Louisiana as being unique, they think of Mardi Gras, crawfish and Cajun culture. Few realize that what lies beneath the Gulf of Mexico along Louisiana's coast is also unique, from the terrain and habitat to the animals living there. And two LSU researchers are diving down some 3,000 meters to explore it.

Researchers Harry Roberts and Bob Carney are combing the most unique continental slope in the world to study some of the most unique animal communities on the planet -- all just off the coast of Louisiana.

Roberts and Carney are studying 14 different sites where oil and gas seep up from the bottom of the Gulf. In particular, they are studying the animals that live near these "seeps." These organisms include bacteria that feed on hydrogen sulfide gas, a by-product of the oil and gas seepage; tube worms, mussels and clams that serve as hosts to those bacteria; and shrimp, crabs, fish, snails and starfish that, in turn, feed on the worms, mussels and clams. These animal communities are unique because they only exist near these seeps, and because the bacteria at the base of the food chain are "chemosynthetic," or grow without sunlight.

The large number of oil and gas seeps and the vast amount of salt under the Gulf floor near Louisiana's coast, along with all the sediment dumped into the Gulf by the Mississippi River, make the continental slope off the coast of Louisiana unique.

The entire article can be found in Science Daily via this link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060525120715.htm

How to Recycle Practically Anything

No matter where you live, you can recycle a wide range of discards...perhaps more than you realize. In the May/June issue of E: The Environment Magazine, Sally Deneen in "How to Recycle Practically Anything" tells you just that and provides a guide to help you recycle all those items you can' t bear to throw away.

The recycling industry has evolved since the mid-1990s and now not only can you recycle more things, but your discards are very much in demand.

"Without recycling, given current virgin raw material supplies, we could not print the daily newspaper, build a car, or ship a product in a cardboard box.... Recycling is not some feel-good activity; it is one of the backbones of global economic development," states Jerry Powell, editor of Resource Recycling magazine.

FACT: Recycling one aluminum can conserves 300 watt-hours, enough to run a 100-watt bulb for three hours. It talks five percent of the energy to make a new aluminum can out of an old can compared to making a new can out of raw materials.

FACT: In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of as much as 100,000 pounds of trash for his or her children.

For more information:
Container Recycling Institute
Earth 911
Electronics & Books Recycling Days in Kane County, IL.
Illinois Recycling Association
Recycle Electronics @ Illinois Locations

Recommendation: Secrets of the Savanna

Owens, Delia & Mark. Secrets of the Savanna: twenty-three years in the African wilderness unraveling the myseteries of elephants and people. Foreword by Alexandra Fuller. 230 p., 10 color photographs. 2006. Published by Houghton Mifflin Books.






From Booklist:
Mark and Delia Owens, who have studied lions in the Kalahari Desert (Cry of the Kalahari, 1984) and elephants in Zambia and Mozambique (Eye of the Elephant, 1992), now write more fully of their years in Zambia.

When the Owenses arrived at North Luangwa National Park in the mid-1980s, the park had been abandoned to poachers. Corrupt local officials, and even the scouts who were hired to protect the park, were making huge profits while decimating the park's elephants. The couple began to work with local villagers, hiring people to build roads and start fish farms and helping with health care and education. They also continued their study of the elephants, documenting how the social structure changed when numbers were very low and how the survivors rebuilt their lives.

The Owenses also saw strong parallels between human and elephant societies. This community-based approach to conservation, coupled with firsthand reporting of fieldwork in Africa, will find many avid readers.
-- Nancy Bent, Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


On Sunday, June 4 at 4pm, Border's Books in Danada Shopping Center will host a book signing for Secrets of the Savanna with Delia and Mark Owens.
Border's Books @ Danada Shopping Center: 101 Rice Lake Square, Wheaton, Illinoi s - 630.871.9595

Brookfield Zoo Library catalog: http://swan.sls.lib.il.us

Recommendation: Chicago: City of the Big Shoulders - WTTW

Chicago: City of the Big Shoulders hosted by NPR's Scott Simon premieres May 18th at 8 pm on WTTW-Channel 11 (check for local schedule)

EDENS LOST & FOUND is a four-hour PBS series that will showcase extraordinary stories of environmental rebirth in very different American cities. The Chicago program highlights Chicago Wilderness; with several CW members featured in the show. (Chicago Zoological Society is one of the founding members of Chicago Wilderness and the organization’s Communication office is housed at Brookfield Zoo.)

· Each one-hour program examines the environmental, economic and social issues that face one of the country's great cities and the innovative solutions developed there that can help solve problems.

· Stories and interviews with citizen activists, politicians, urban planners, and just plain folks who contributed to their city's urban renaissance reveal how passion combined with innovative strategies can address the widespread problems facing many of America's urban environments today.

Edens Lost & Found - Chicago - City Hall and grass roots groups in Chicago are working on open space, green buildings and an educated citizenry to create a sustainable city.

Edens Lost & Found - Philadelphia - Faced with severe budget limitations, Philadelphia's rebirth is being brought about by a network of community-based volunteer organizations.

Edens Lost & Found - Los Angeles - Is it possible that the City of the Angels can tell a story to the world about environmental rebirth? (RELEASE 10/06)

Edens Lost & Found - Seattle - Recognizing that the human community is growing faster than the aging infrastructure, the city of Seattle created an Office of Sustainability and Environment. (RELEASE 10/06)

To find out more information, visit http://www.edenslostandfound.org/
& Bullfrog Films

How Toxic Are You?

Are you a pure, a tainted, or a potentially toxic person?

The World Wildlife Foundation is asking,

how toxic are you?

Hazardous man-made chemicals used in every-day products are contaminating people and wildlife. They are found in the tissue of nearly every person on Earth and exposure to them has been linked to several cancers and to a range of reproductive problems, including birth defects. Between 1930 and 2000 global production of man-made chemicals increased from 1 million to 400 million tons each year.

Find out what you can do to stop this at: http://detox.panda.org/the_problem/

Take this online test to find out how potentially toxic your life is!

For more information:

• Commission for Environmental Cooperation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Greenpeace Organization
• Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
  
  

Photo credit: World Wildlife Organization for more information

Dragonfly Migration

Simple rules guide dragonfly migration
(by Martin Wikelski, David Moskowitz, James S. Adelman, Jim Cochran, David S. Wilcove, Michael L. May)
Biology Letters 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0487 (9 May 2006)

ABSTRACT: Every year billions of butterflies, dragonflies, moths and other insects migrate across continents, and considerable progress has been made in understanding population-level migratory phenomena. However, little is known about destinations and strategies of individual insects. We attached miniaturized radio transmitters (ca 300mg) to the thoraxes of 14 individual dragonflies (common green darners, Anax junius) and followed them during their autumn migration for up to 12 days, using receiver-equipped Cessna airplanes and ground teams. Green darners exhibited distinct stopover and migration days. On average, they migrated every 2.9±0.3 days, and their average net advance was 58±11km in 6.1±0.9 days (11.9±2.8kmd−1) in a generally southward direction (186±52°). They migrated exclusively during the daytime, when wind speeds were less than 25kmh−1, regardless of wind direction, but only after two nights of successively lower temperatures (decrease of 2.1±0.6°C in minimum temperature). The migratory patterns and apparent decision rules of green darners are strikingly similar to those proposed for songbirds, and may represent a general migration strategy for long-distance migration of organisms with high self-propelled flight speeds.


In the article below, Corey Binns addresses the recent article published in Biology Letters about how scientists have found that the bugs follow the same migratory patterns that birds do.

Dragonflies migrate just like birds
(MSNBC, 15 May 2006)
Small animals have been migrating since ancient times, but scientists still don't know very much about where most of the wandering critters come from or where they're going. "We're just about as ignorant as Aristotle was 2,000 years ago," said biologist Martin Wikelski, referring to the Greek philosopher's false claim that birds hibernated in marshes during winter. Wikelski knows more than Aristotle now, at least on one topic.

In a recent study, he led a team of Princeton researchers who found dragonflies and songbirds share long-distance travel habits, suggesting migration behaviors are less complex and could be more than 100 million years older than previously thought.

The scientists stuck tiny radio transmitters to the wings of 14 green darner dragonflies and followed the radio signals in an airplane and with handheld devices on the ground.
"They migrate exactly like birds—or birds actually migrate like insects," Wikelski told LiveScience.

Although dragonflies are 140 million years older than birds, according to fossil records, they abide by the same temperature and wind rules. Both groups stay put on blustery days and travel only after two days of cooling temperatures. They even use the same markers on the landscape, and rest on the same beaches.

"We saw other similarities as well, which makes us wonder just how far back in Earth's history the rules for migration were established in its animals," said Wikelski. Radio transmitters attached to flying, migrating insects and birds can tell researchers a lot about how small animals travel. Wikelski is now using the technology to study bat migration.

Hooked up to satellites, the transmitters could track small animals on a global scale. The information would help scientists make plans for conservation, predict locust swarms, and protect people from introduced species and diseases.

"We need to spend some time observing animals on this planet," said Wikelski. "This importance has been brought home with avian flu. We don't know where it comes from or where it's going."

Photo credit: Phil Sandlin/AP file

Quagga Mussel

According to an Associated Press article, the population of an invasive mussel species in Lake Michigan is declining - but only because a more prolific relative appears to be taking its place.

The quagga mussel (Dreissena bugensis) seems to have nearly annihilated the zebra mussel population, said Russell Cuhel, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Great Lakes WATER Institute. "Right now, if you go out and suck up 1,000 mussels, you're lucky to find a couple of zebra mussels," he said.

The zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), a native of the Caspian and Black Sea region, was first found in the Great Lakes in the late 1980s. The mussels quickly made their presence known, hogging the plankton upon which so many fish species depend. They also filtered nearshore waters to unnatural clarity that spawned excessive algae outbreaks, and they clogged industrial water intake pipes.

Quaggas have done the same thing on a larger scale, blanketing the lake bottom in many of the deep, cold places that the more delicate zebras can't survive. "Everybody used to say, 'Oh no, zebra mussels!'" Cuhel said. "Well, zebras don't hold a candle to what these guys are going to do to Lake Michigan."

Quaggas were first found in the lake in 1997 and are believed to have invaded the Great Lakes from the Caspian and Black Sea region from contaminated ballast water discharged from overseas freighters. Their shells closely resemble those of zebra mussels but the quaggas are more hardy and prolific. That worries experts who fear the lake could face serious ecological shock.

"With quagga mussels getting in and becoming established, it's a much different situation," said Tom Nalepa, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. "The changes occurring to Lake Michigan are going to be more significant because the mussel biomass is much greater."

A recent survey of 160 sites across Lake Michigan showed a reversal in the invasive mussel population, Nalepa said. In 2000, zebras comprised 98.3 percent of the mussel population. In 2005, quaggas made up 97.7 percent.

The quagga explosion may be responsible for the plummeting population of diporeia, a shrimp-like creature that is an important food source for some fish. The average density of diporeia dropped from 1,836 per square meter five years ago to 293 today. While no direct connection has been established between the rise of quaggas and the decline of diporeia, few doubt there's a link.

Experts say invasive species continue to find their way into the Great Lakes, with a new species discovered about every 6 1/2 months. Most arrive in the bellies of overseas freighters. Legislation to improve control over contaminated ballast water spills has stalled in Congress for more than three years.

For more information:
U.S. Geological Survey

Photo credit: Quagga mussel (Dreissena bugensis), B.May
The Sea Grant Nonindigenous Species Site (SGNIS)

A New Genus of African Monkey

A new species of monkey identified in Tanzania's highlands last year is an even more remarkable find than thought -- it is a new genus of animal.




The new monkey, at first called the highland mangabey but now known as kipunji, is more closely related to baboons than to mangabey monkeys, but in fact deserves its own genus and species classification, the researchers reported in the journal Science. So they have re-named it Rungwecebus kipunji, and it is the first new genus of a living primate from Africa to be identified in 83 years.

"This is exciting news because it shows that the age of discovery is by no means over," said William Stanley, mammal collection manager at The Field Museum in Chicago, which has a dead specimen of the grayish-brown monkey." Finding a new genus of the best-studied group of living mammals is a sobering reminder of how much we have to learn about our planet's biodiversity," added Link Olson of the University of Alaska Museum, who worked with Stanley and others on the paper.

Tim Davenport, lead author of the paper, who is from the Wildlife Conservation Society and is based in Tanzania, said: "We first came across the monkey a couple of years ago - the realization that it was a new species was really exciting.

"Since then we knew it would only be a matter of time before we got hold of a dead animal - because they are hunted - and once we had and we started looking at it more closely, we realized it was a new genus. That was just incredible - it is something that really doesn't happen that often." This is the first species discovery for monkeys since 1927, when Allen's swamp monkey was discovered.

“The discovery of a new primate species is an amazing event, but the discovery of a new genus makes this animal a true conservation celebrity,” said Davenport. “The scientific community has been waiting for eight decades for this to happen, and now we must we move fast to protect it.”

For more information about this discovery, read "A New Genus of African Monkey, Rungwecebus: Morphology, Ecology, and Molecular Phylogenetics" published in Science (11 May 2006).

The Wildlife Conservation Society has set up a website dedicated to the protection of the species:http://www.kipunji.org.

Photo credit: A Rungwecebus kipunji (Tim Davenport/WCS)

Science Meets Art

Wildlife has inspired artists for centuries. Naturally, we here at Brookfield Zoo share this historic fascination, and one would be hard pressed to find art here that isn't animal-themed.

In celebration of the art deco pieces that adorned the zoo when it opened in 1934, we have revamped Discovery Center to host a small public exhibit. Hanging along the perimeter of the lobby, geometric forms of animals peer down from Formica tabletops. A cast stone wall of animals sits at the lobby center. These pieces - examples of deco works that characterized the American Modern Art Movement from 1925 to 1940 - once graced the Refectory, now called Safari Grill.

Created as part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, which was sanctioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the artwork delighted visitors and provided income for many artists during the Great Depression.

Visit Discovery Center to see the restored collection for yourself. You can also reserve the space for private events by calling the zoo at 708.485.0263, ext. 355.

Biodiversity Literature

Biodiversity Heritage Library
Eight of the world's major natural history institutions and botanical libraries - including the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the National Museum of Natural History - are working together to digitize the published literature on biodiversity that they jointly hold and make it freely accessible on the Internet.

The project, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, will establish a central resource of biodiversity publications drawn from their combined collections - some 2 million volumes collected during 200 years. Other participants include the Royal Botanic Gardens, England; the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and Harvard University Botany Libraries; the Natural History Museum, London; and the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
Anyone in the world with an Internet connection and an interest in the Earth's living species can now access worldwide networks of biodiversity data form his or her desktop, thanks to the Global Diversity Information Facility (GBIF). The world's biodiversity encompasses all living species of plants, animals and organisms on the planet Earth, as well as their genetic variants and the ecosystems in which they live.

For more information about GBIF, read "Earth's Biodiversity Now on Your Desktop" published by the National Science Foundation.

Recommendation: Sullivan, Hunting for Frogs on Elston

Sullivan, Jerry. Hunting for Frogs on Elston, and Other Tales from Field & Street. Edited by Victor M. Cassidy. Illustrated by Bobby Sutton. Foreword by William Cronon. 320 p., 33 line drawings, 3 maps. 6 x 9 2004. Published by the University of Chicago Press.



A selection of savvy observations on urban ecology from one of the Midwest's foremost authorities on the subject, Hunting for Frogs on Elston collects the best of naturalist Jerry Sullivan's weekly Field & Street columns, originally published in the Chicago Reader. Engaging, opinionated, inspiring, and occasionally irreverent, Hunting for Frogs on Elston pays tribute to Chicago's natural history while celebrating one of its greatest champions.

Published in association with the Chicago Wilderness coalition, Hunting for Frogs on Elston comprehensively chronicles Chicagoland's unique urban ecology, from its indigenous prairie and oft-delayed seasons to its urban coyotes and passenger pigeons. In witty, informed prose, Sullivan evokes his adventures netting dog-faced butterflies, hunting rattlesnakes, and watching fireflies mate. Inspired by regional flora and fauna, Sullivan ventures throughout the metropolis and its environs in search of sludge worms, gyrfalcons, and wild onions. In reporting his findings to otherwise oblivious urbanites, Sullivan endeavors to make "alienated, atomized, postmodern people feel at home, connected to something beyond ourselves."

In the sprawling Chicagoland region, where an urban ecosystem teeming with remarkable life evolves between skyscrapers and train tracks, no writer chronicled the delicate balance of nature and industry more vividly than Jerry Sullivan. An homage to the urban ecology Sullivan loved so dearly, Hunting for Frogs on Elston is his fitting legacy as well as a lasting gift to the urban naturalist in us all. [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/16230.ctl]

Read an excerpt published in Chicago Wildnerness magazine: http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/summer2004/excerptsfrogs.html

Brookfield Zoo Library catalog: http://swan.sls.lib.il.us

Garlic Mustard's Effect on Forest & Species

Garlic mustard is a cool season biennial herb posing an ecological threat. In the May 2 issue of The New York Times, Henry Fountain addresses three recent studies pertaining to garlic mustard in an article entitled, "Garlic Mustard Casts a Pall on the Forest": http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/science/02observ.html.

For more information on garlic mustard:
National Park Service:
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/alpe1.htm

Rothman, JM, Van Soest Peter J, Pell Alice N. (2006) Decaying wood is a sodiuum source for mountain gorillas. Biology Letters (early publication online): http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0480

Stinson KA, Campbell SA, Powell JR, Wolfe BE, Callaway RM, et al. (2006) Invasive plant suppresses the growth of native tree seedlings by disrupting belowground mutualisms.
PLoS Biol 4(5): e140:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040140

Polar Bears Sink Deeper Into Danger

The 2006 edition of the global guidebook for species in danger, the IUCN Red List, published today, has officially upgraded the bears' status from 'conservation-dependent' to 'vulnerable'.

To read more about the effects of climate change, pollution, and human hunters on polar bear status, visit Michael Hopkins' article "Polar Bears Sink Deeper Into Danger" as published in today's issue of Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060501/full/060501-2.html.