Michigan State University’s student newspaper, the State News, has a recommended article reviewing the current status of our state’s endangered Mitchell’s satyr butterfly.  Excerpts and link:

“Last year in Michigan, we knew of 17 sites that had this butterfly and two in Indiana, and we’ve lost one in Michigan and one in Indiana,” Hamm said.

Mitchell’s satyr live in prairie fens, a rare type of wetland habitat found in southern Michigan and northern Indiana, Hamm said.

“As these habitats become more rare and isolated … inbreeding depression becomes more likely,” said Doug Landis, Hamm’s adviser and a professor of entomology.

“The largest population is between two and three thousand, and the smallest is in the tens and those sites may be going extinct.”

Hamm said he traveled to the sites in Michigan where populations are known to exist and took samples from the wings of individuals to study their DNA.

“I net the butterfly, I hold it in my left hand; with my right I take a pair of forceps and take the piece I need and then I mark the butterfly so I don’t catch it again,” Hamm said. “It’s a very small butterfly: If it folds its wings in half, it’s about the size of my thumbnail.”

More…

http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/08/grad_student_studies_endangered_butterflies

Note:  Lenawee County contains at least one fen habitat preferred by the Mitchell’s satyr.  The Nature Conservancy’s Ives Road Fen near Tecumseh is this type of fen habitat.

Photo Credit: MI DNR

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