Hidden in the Waterton Lakes National Park, the small grayish brown butterflies, a long time that it is believed to be just another population of Media Luna butterflies, are now recognized as their own species known as Curiosolo satyror curiously isolated hair.
The pollinizer lives exclusively through approximately 300 hectares of the Prairie-Grassland landscape of Blakiston’s fanatic, the largest alluvial fan in the park, flat areas where the mountain currents that flow have deposited sediments.
And its territory is more than 450 kilometers from any of its relative populations in British Columbia or Montana, according to the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, study partner.
Zachary Macdonald, co-first author with Julian Dupuis of a New study posted in Biodiversity Research Zookeys magazineHe said that the new species is an exciting discovery, but what comes next is even more.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” MacDonald, the Kretz and Nser Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California said. “I think the most interesting thing for us is what do we do with the conservation of this highly endangered species now?”
Using genomic tools, the researchers gathered the entire DNA sequence of the individual insects collected from Blakiston Fan.
The resulting genomes sets, together with ecological evidence, were used to determine curiously insulated hair, were genetically and ecologically eliminated from their closest relatives up to 40,000 years ago.
James Glasier, an environmentalist conservation population and co -author of the study, said that when the Wilder Institute and Parks Canada began to look at this butterfly population, they did not expect to discover a new species.
“When we go through those five years doing all the investigation, we discovered that it has many more unique features than we thought,” he said. “And so is great. It makes it an endemic and unique species for Alberta and Canada.”
Meet the curious new species
Literally appointed by its isolation that causes curiosity in Blakiston’s fanatic, Macdonald said it can be inferred that the population of the hair curiously isolated has probably always been small.
While other hair populations have risen and down with time (due to factors such as the last ice age), the newly recognized butterfly “basically planned over time, so it has been very small and very isolated for tens of thousands of years,” he explained.
Outside, the new species looks a lot like its closest relative, the crescent hair, with an wingspan of an inch to an inch and a half (2.5 to 4 centimeters). But unlike the crescent hair, which thrives in the steppe of artemis, the newly identified species is based on silver lupine as its host plant to develop larvae and so that the caterpillars are fed.
They also have an interesting mutual relationship with a particular species of ant (Lasio Ponderosae). Curiously isolated caterpillars excrete a sugary substance called Honeydew for ants to eat, while ants protect the caterpillars from parasites and predators.
When bothering or when the temperature is too hot, the caterpillars are removed to ants galleries, according to the study. Adult females have been placed by placing their eggs near the entrances of the ants colonies, just below the silver lupine plant.
How genomics is remodeling taxonomy
Macdonald said that the use of genomics by the study, the study of the genome of an organism, allowed researchers to answer questions to those who could not have before.
With a small effective population of approximately 500 individuals, the genomic analysis of the insect revealed extremely low genetic diversity and exceptionally high levels of historical inbreeding, according to the study.
“You would assume that endogamous depression will lead to extinction to extinction,” MacDonald said. “But this population has been very small for a long time, and slow inbreeding has basically allowed him to get rid of his bad genes.”
Arthur Shapiro, entomologist and professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, who did not participate in the study, said that research is “one more case in which genetics tells the story more dramatically than morphology.” He said that this reinforces the conviction of scientists that “it is happening more around what can be superficially evident.”
“Decisions about the state of species used to be based almost completely on morphology,” he explained in an email. “Today, genomics is the same, if not essential, of importance.”
Keeping the butterflies in danger of extinction
Glasier said that the low genetic diversity of the population raises a great concern to conserve endangered species, since it limits the butterfly capacity to adapt to environmental change, especially the consequences of a heating climate such as the increase in forest fires.
He said that the Wilder Institute, in association with Parks Canada, is already monitoring the population to see how it responds to changing conditions.
Another challenge that they are trying to address is the invasive stained knapweed, which threatens the quality of the butterflies habitat in the Blakiston fan.
In the long term, Glasier said that organizations are potentially watching captive breeding. That means bringing some butterflies under human care and freeing them back to their natural habitat or finding them in another home inside the park to begin a secondary population.
“We have found some places where we hope they can potentially survive, so we are potentially seeing, in the future, freeing them there to spread to the population and allow them to expand a little so that there are populations of support in the future,” he said.
Glasier said that the challenge of conserving curiously isolated hair is “definitely a puzzle”, since they work to find the best ways to protect endangered species, but feel optimistic about a “positive result.”
