An integral part of a vast array of insect pollinators, the shrinking of butterflies due to rising temperatures could have drastic consequences for agriculture
In the early 1970s, meteorologist Edward Lorenz put the flight of a butterfly at the metaphorical heart of chaos theory — planting the question, could the mere flap of the insect’s wings influence the path of a tornado days later?
“The prediction is that with warmer temperatures, we should actually be seeing a global decrease in insect body size, like all around the world. Do we see that? That's a really big question,” said Michelle Tseng, an assistant professor of botany and zoology at UBC and the senior on the study. Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have released vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, driving up average global temperatures by a little over 1.1 Celsius.
How to deploy a butterfly backpack To measure the effects of temperature on the development of insects, the UBC researchers grew butterflies of different sizes in the lab. So Tseng and her graduate student Erez Büyükyilmaz built a “butterfly backpack” out of jewellery wire and non-toxic glue. With that, they attached the butterflies to a specialized tool known as a flight mill. Resembling a miniature inverted windmill, the whirligig-looking machine measures how far and fast a butterfly flies.
But a lot of questions remained, chief among them whether the lab experiments could carry over into nature. In other words, the hotter the weather, the smaller the butterfly; the smaller the butterfly, the fewer plants they visited. Past research indicates the decline in pollinators could lead to a decline in crop production of at least five per cent in higher-income countries, though some have speculated that may have already climbed to 10 per cent.
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