Relative Of Extinct Xerces Butterfly Helps Restore California Habitat Destroyed In Its Demise

Relative Of Extinct Xerces Butterfly Helps Restore California Habitat Destroyed In Its Demise

Relative Of Extinct Xerces Butterfly Helps Restore California Habitat Destroyed In Its Demise (left the Xerxes blue butterfly in a museum collection (right) the silvery blue butterfly – credit, Brianwray26 CC 4.0. / D Gordon Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0. The coastal dunes of the San Francisco peninsula serve as the natural backdrop to the dramatic curve of the Golden Gate Bridge, but just recently they also became the test bed for an “amazing” experiment in rewilding. Can an extinct species, which played a key role in its ecosystem, live on through its close relatives? That’s what ecologist at the California Academy of Sciences are trying to figure out. Using silvery blue butterflies, the ecologists are attempting to replicate the role and activity of the extinct Xerxes blue butterfly, an important regional pollinator that became the first known invertebrate species to go extinct in North America post-industrialization. The Gold Rush saw rapid urban development, and populations boomed in the Go…