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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/30/butterflywatch-chilling-impact-of-heatwaves-on-caterpillars
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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Butterflywatch: chilling impact of heatwaves on caterpillars | Butterflywatch: chilling impact of heatwaves on caterpillars |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| Can you guess the worst natural disaster for British butterflies in recent history? It was not the Beast from the East this February, nor the sunless summer of 2012, but actually the long hot summer of 1976. There may have been butterflies aplenty that year, but the drought caused the next generation of caterpillars’ food plants to shrivel with calamitous results. | Can you guess the worst natural disaster for British butterflies in recent history? It was not the Beast from the East this February, nor the sunless summer of 2012, but actually the long hot summer of 1976. There may have been butterflies aplenty that year, but the drought caused the next generation of caterpillars’ food plants to shrivel with calamitous results. |
| Knotted hankies and hammocks: the heatwave of 1976 – in pictures | Knotted hankies and hammocks: the heatwave of 1976 – in pictures |
| A scientific study found that 54 of 207 species of butterfly and moth suffered a population crash after ’76. It took common butterflies until 1984 to recover; rarer species never did. The chequered skipper became extinct in England. The large blue followed a couple of years later. So while this golden summer is adorned with a profusion of marbled whites and meadow browns, unfortunately next summer could herald far fewer, at least in the parched south-east of England. | A scientific study found that 54 of 207 species of butterfly and moth suffered a population crash after ’76. It took common butterflies until 1984 to recover; rarer species never did. The chequered skipper became extinct in England. The large blue followed a couple of years later. So while this golden summer is adorned with a profusion of marbled whites and meadow browns, unfortunately next summer could herald far fewer, at least in the parched south-east of England. |
| But Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation is not too despondent. We’ve had heavy spring rainfall unlike in ’76, when the drought began the previous year. And after 1995, the driest summer on record, only five butterfly species really slumped: large, small and green-veined whites, speckled wood and ringlet. “We’re probably looking at severe impacts on a small group of drought-sensitive species rather than mass catastrophe for all butterflies,” Fox says. | But Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation is not too despondent. We’ve had heavy spring rainfall unlike in ’76, when the drought began the previous year. And after 1995, the driest summer on record, only five butterfly species really slumped: large, small and green-veined whites, speckled wood and ringlet. “We’re probably looking at severe impacts on a small group of drought-sensitive species rather than mass catastrophe for all butterflies,” Fox says. |
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