NEWS
Butterfly behaviour shows ways to protect natural habitats in a rapidly changing world
Charl Deacon
Current Address : Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Entomology , Stellenbosch University Reprinted from : https :// bit . ly / 44N2BlH
N atural landscapes are continually transformed to make room for agricultural and urban developments – often at the expense of important habitats and species .
That ’ s why , to avoid unnecessary species extinctions , it ’ s crucial to know which habitats to protect . In a recent paper we studied how changes to the landscape affected butterflies in a grassland area of South Africa ’ s KwaZulu-Natal province .
The sheer speed at which landscapes are being transformed by human activity means that conservationists simply don ’ t have the time to gather detailed information on all the species in a particular region . That slows down conservation responses . It ’ s also not always possible to conserve entire landscapes and doing so is not always economically feasible .
Butterflies are icons in the sky . On warm summer days we can watch them dance elegantly from flower to flower . But they aren ’ t just beautiful to look at . They are important pollinators , and are important in natural food chains . For scientists , they are sentinel species . By identifying how they interact with landscapes we gain a better understanding of how other insect species do , too .
Our research offers a closer look at how butterflies interact with the landscapes they roam . This , in turn , allows us to delve into how conservation measures can be adopted to better protect butterfly communities against the effects of people changing natural habitats .
We found that a variety of different
Figure 1 . The Sooty blue butterfly ( Zizeeria knysna ), a common yet easily missed resident species in grassland habitats . Charl Deacon
Grassroots Vol 23 No 2 July 2023 16