fender's blue

7/31/2019 Fender's Blue

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Conservation of Fender s Blue Butterfly through

Land Management Methods Used in the Upland

Prairies of the Willamette Valley

Photo by Donovan Kim



Current Fender s Blue Work

There is currently no recovery plan submittedfor Fender s Blue Butterfly (Schultz 2003)

Research has taken place in resourcerestoration

Research has taken place in dispersalbehavior

ESA requirements have only recently begunto be fulfilled using Population Viability Analysis (PVA)



Resource Restoration

Three experimental methods were used intwo sites to test resource restoration:

Tilling Removes existing vegetation and allows newly planted

species to establish

Solarization Lay a sheet of clear plastic over freshly tilled soil,

reduces competition from weeds Reverse Fertilization

Restores historically nutrient poor soil conditions,reduces soil nitrogen



Fig. 1. Experimental design. Dark shaded boxes are high forb : low grass plantings and lightshaded boxes are low forb : high grass plantings. Each plot is randomly divided into a weededhalf and a non-weeded half. Dotted lines indicate areas within which weeds were clipped to

assess weed biomass in 1996. Note, solarization treatments are larger than other treatmentsbecause Wilson, Ingersoll & Wilson (1994) found effective solarization requires a 2-3 m buffer

from the edge of the plastic.

(Schultz 2001)



Dispersal Behavior

Less than 0.5% of prairie habitat remains in

patches (Schultz 2005; Wilson 1997)

Flight paths were followed by dropping a flagevery 20 seconds and the following behaviors

were recorded:

Fly, perch, bask, nectar, oviposit, and chase

Habitat bias was recorded on an individual

and population level



Dispersal Distance From Kincaids

Lupine Habitat

(Schultz 1998)



Population Viability Analysis

Three regions studied: Northern,

Central, and Southern

Two survey methods were used to

estimate butterfly population size: mark-

recapture-release, and walking transect

method This study does make four assumptions



Management Methods Resource restoration research suggests that

solarization is the best method to provide minimum

nectar levels (Severns 2003) Dispersal behavior suggests that stepping-stone

patches of lupine will move Fender s Blue Butterfly

between populations at a rate 8 times faster than a

corridor of habitat (Jensen 1998)

PVA produced numbers for the a 95% probability of survival over the next 100 yearsMy Thoughts

Collaboration of methods is needed to sustain



What should be done?

With these three experiments a

recovery plan can be devised for

Fender s Blue Butterfly

Resource management can be chosen

based on dispersal behavior, patch

size, distance between patches, andwhether or not three sites can fulfill the

PVA analysis



Works Cited Jensen, M.N. 1998. Butterfly May Use Flowery Stepping Stone. Science News 153: 262.

Schultz, Cheryl B. 1998. Dispersal Behavior and Its Implications for Reserve Design in aRare Oregon Butterfly. Conservation Biology 12: 284-292.

Schultz, Cheryl B. 2001. Restoring Resources for an Endangered Butterfly. Journal of Applied Ecology 38: 1007-1019.

Schultz, Cherly b., Elizabeth E. Crone. 2005. Patch Size and Connectivity Thresholds for Butterfly Habitat Restoration. Conservation Biology 19: 887-896.

Schultz, Cheryl B., Paul C. Hammond. 2003. Using Population Viability Analysis to DevelpRecovery Criteria for Endangered Insects: Case Study of the Fender s Blue Butterfly.Conservation Biology 17: 1372-1385.

Severns, Paul M. 2003. Propagation of a Long-Lived and Threatened Prairie Plant, Lupinussulphureus ssp. Kincaidii. Restoration Ecology 11: 334-342.

Wilson, Mark V. 1996. A Survey of the Native Upland Prairies of the Willamette Valley.

Bureau of Land Management Eugene District. Wilson, Mark V., Paul C. Hammond, Cheryl B. Schultz. 1997. The Interdependence of

Native Plants and Fender s Blue Butterfly. Oregon State University. 25 Apr 2007 <http://oregonstate.edu/~wilsomar/PDF/WHS_NPSO_97.pdf>.

Wilson, Mark V., Cheryl A. Ingersoll, Mark G. Wilson. 1995. Pest Plant and Seed BandReduction. Report to the US Army Corps of Engineers and Fishman EnvironmentalServices. Corvallis, Or.

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