je.st
news
Tag: butterflies
Deciphering Butterflies' Designer Colors: Findings Could Inspire New Hue-Changing Materials
2013-07-17 06:00:00| Industrial Newsroom - All News for Today
Physicists have uncovered how subtle differences in tiny crystals of butterfly wings create varied patterns of color even among closely related species. Discovery is reported in Optical Society's Optical Materials Express journal in paper titled "Iridescence and nano-structure differences in Papilio butterflies." If researchers can figure out how to replicate wings' light-manipulating properties, discovery could lead to new coatings for manufactured materials that could change color by ...This story is related to the following:Trade Associations
Tags: materials
colors
designer
findings
British butterflies suffer devastating year after 2012's wet summer
2013-03-26 07:44:00| Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming Newsfeed
Guardian: Fewer butterflies flew in British skies in the miserable summer of 2012 than for thousands of years, leaving several species in danger of extinction from parts of the country. The country's most endangered butterfly, the high brown fritillary, saw its small population slump by 46%, while another rare species, the black hairstreak, fell by 98%, as 300,000 fewer butterflies were recorded on the wing compared with 2011. The wettest ever year recorded in England was equally damaging for once common...
Butterflies 'hurt by cold, wet 2012'
2013-03-26 01:51:00| Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming Newsfeed
BBC: Butterflies suffered in last year's wet and cold weather, having their worst year since 1976, a charity says. Only four of the 56 species studied in the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme saw an increase in population size. The relentless rain and cold of 2012 meant that in particular summer species struggled to find food, shelter and mating opportunities. The scheme looked at how a range of species did at more than 1,000 sites across the UK. The black hairstreak, one of the UK's rarest butterflies,...
Tags: cold
wet
hurt
butterflies
Coldness triggers northward flight in monarch butterflies
2013-02-21 20:45:00| Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming Newsfeed
ScienceDaily: Each fall millions of monarch butterflies from across the eastern United States begin a southward migration in order to escape the frigid temperatures of their northern boundaries, traveling up to 2,000 miles to an overwintering site in a specific grove of fir trees in central Mexico. Surprisingly, a new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School published in Current Biology, suggests that exposure to coldness found in the microenvironment of the monarch's overwintering...
Tags: flight
triggers
butterflies
monarch
Butterflies Booking It North as Climate Warms
2013-01-31 22:42:00| Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming Newsfeed
Mother Jones: Butterflies from the southern US that used to be rare in the northeast are now appearing there on a regular basis. The trend correlates to a warming climate report the authors of a paper in Nature Climate Change. Subtropical and warm-climate butterflies--including the giant swallowtail (photo above) and the zabulon skipper (photo below)--showed the sharpest population shift to the north. As recently as the late 1980s these species were rare or absent in Massachusetts. At the same time southern...
Tags: north
booking
climate
butterflies