Back in the day when real men killed dinosaurs with their teeth and science was a disinterested search for the truth, it was permissible to say out loud that some species might benefit from global warming, as we naively called it then.
“Warm” being such a nice word, the desired threat level was not achieved, and so “climate change” was born. Of course we have now reached “climate breakdown.” [Note to Guardian journalists: using that phrase without blushing proves you are idiots. There is no climate breakdown, nor will there ever be, nor can there ever be: all that there is is a rising shriek of hyperbole accompanying a thousand hacks trying to blow gas into a giant green Zeppelin.]
Anyway, it soon became the case that any possible benefits arising from global warming had to be removed from public display, lest it dilute the message (an excellent recent example being the removal of a list of such benefits from the BBC’s bitesize revision site). Not only that: any good thing seemingly happening because of fine weather had to be heavily caveated. Thus we find what has become a standard portent of doom attached to any good news story:
“Species X has had an excellent year, researchers say, rebounding to record numbers from near extinction thanks to the fine weather this summer. But it remains threatened by climate change.”
Because everything is threatened by climate change, and nothing good can ever come of it.
Yesterday the BBC reported that the large blue butterfly has had a good year. On my first go through the article I merely skimmed the article to search for the obligatory acknowledgement:
Extreme weather and climate change also pose a danger, particularly because large blues rely on flowering plants and ant nests.
OK, so never mind that the sentence is nonsense. The required dose of salt was tossed over the shoulder into the Devil’s eye.
Anyway, this story gave me a chance to talk about insects, and I like insects. Let’s begin with the ebullience of the title:
Huge recovery for butterfly once extinct in the UK
Unalloyed optimism there. The large blue was only extinct in the UK for about 4 years, but it was extinct. The reporter – who shall remain nameless to spare her blushes – represents “BBC News Climate and Science.” Yes folks, we have reached the desperate strait when Climate is elevated as something separate from Science.
An endangered butterfly that was once extinct in the UK has had its best summer in 150 years.
I don’t know what happened in 1872 (Edward Newman’s British Butterflies was published in 1869), but on the face of it it looks as if the global warming we’ve had so far has benefitted this species. This would not be surprising. Butterflies generally like it hot. Most butterflies in the UK have a northern limit: any further north and it’s too cold. A few have a southern limit, like the Scotch argus. There are species like the Glanville fritillary that literally cling like limpets to the foot of southern cliffs. What butterflies hate are the miserable summers, the cold summers, the wet and dreary summers. The sunny summers, the hot summers, the dry summers: they love it.
Let’s rewind a sec:
Extreme weather and climate change also pose a danger, particularly because large blues rely on flowering plants and ant nests.
I said it was nonsense, and it is. You might as well say that the large blue is in particular danger because it is alive. Is there a butterfly in the world that does not rely on flowering plants?
The project saw conservationists focus on restoring a type of wild meadowland where the large blue likes to live.
“It’s one of the strangest butterflies in the world,” said Prof [Jeremy] Thomas.
It leads a very unusual life, spending most of the year as a caterpillar inside red ant nests where it feeds on grubs. This lifecycle makes it more challenging to protect.
This was a chance for the reporter to tell the interesting story about the large blue’s life history, which kinda got mangled. First, if we rewind to 150 years ago, the last time the large blue had a summer this good, and roughly when Edward Newman’s book on British butterflies was published:
Zeller tells us that the egg is laid on the wild thyme, and that the caterpillar feeds on that plant – a statement copied by myself in the previous editions of this history, and still, as yet, only partially confirmed.
Newman, 1874 edition of British Butterflies
So, 150 years ago the large blue’s life history was a puzzle, and I presume that caterpillars, collected together with wild thyme, failed to thrive in captivity. They disappeared in the wild too. What happens is that the caterpillar is collected by a worker of the ant Myrmica sabuleti and taken underground (see featured image). Its sweet secretions ensure that the ants look after it. Meanwhile, the caterpillar is chomping on not just “grubs” – but the grubs of the host ant.
Now the demise and resurrection of the large blue was, as you might expect, well known to students of ecology. The story was of a butterfly restricted to the south of England, and on south-facing slopes in the south of England, and on ground that was particularly hot because its turf was only an inch high due to grazing. A key point was that the large blue was widespread in mainland Europe, but was on the edge of its range in the UK. It was dependent on a thermophilic ant, and it was found in the hottest places on the hottest hillsides in the hottest parts of the UK. So if global warming was to have done anything, it would have helped, not hindered. But you have to have the other things: the ant, the thyme, the short turf. And even if you have those things, the large blue won’t automagically appear. Its adults are short lived. They don’t spread far. The suitable habitat is widely scattered and cut into small fragments. Without a friendly ecologist to carry the butterfly from one place to another, its extinction was assured. Its extinction is still assured without support because local extinctions are inevitable, and surviving populations elsewhere will be unable to recolonise the empty habitat.
When I was a student, the then Institute of Terrestrial Ecology published The greenhouse effect and terrestrial ecosystems of the UK (1990), of which I excerpt this:
and this little gem from the end of the report (Chapter 12: historical evidence of climatic change effects, by M. D. Hooper):
Four years later, the ITE investigated what climate change meant for rare species with Climate change and rare species in Britain:
In other words, species that might benefit from warmer weather will not be able to do so because of habitat fragmentation.
Here the population is described as having been reduced by anthropogenic factors (land use change, not carbon dioxide). The drought that finished it off was “freak climatic conditions.” Of course, if you are restricted to one place, it is expected that sooner or later the summer will be unsuitable entirely for survival and breeding. And even if you are in a place which is usually only just hot enough, there is always the chance that one year it will be too hot. And that would be that.
This is from the caption to the report’s frontispiece:
“Both harmful and beneficial effects.” The latter have now been expunged. Now we have this attitude, as I found searching for news of the Adonis blue:
The “climate crisis” is killing off the nice insects, and making sure that the horrible ones thrive.
Notes and References
The featured image, a drawing of the ant with an early caterpillar of a large blue comes from E. B. Ford’s 1945 Butterflies.
The greenhouse effect and terrestrial ecosystems of the UK. ITE research publication no. 4, 1990
Climate change and rare species in Britain. ITE research publication no. 8, 1994.
Climate Scepticism 
Miri it is while suer y last
With fugheles son
Or nu neheth windes blast
And weder strong.
Ei, ei! What this night is long
And ich with wel michel wrong
Soregh and murne and faste.
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We sceptics have a new occupation – looking out good news stories and finding within them the inevitable “but climate change will make it worse” caveat.
It will be interesting to see how the alarmists deal with it if the good news just keeps on coming. It might become more than a little difficult to keep saying “but climate change”. Will they simply cease reporting on good news?
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I think of the second sentence as coming from our inner Dalek: “Exterminate!” We all have an inner Dalek but it’s embarrassing when you have to reveal it at every turn. Every turn for the better, that is, of course.
Cultivating great mental health has never been the alarmist’s strongpoint. That might even matter.
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I sure don’t think it’s good news for the innocent ant grubs.
Has there been any comment upon the effect of climate Armageddon on those thermophilic ants?
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Since learning about the life cycle of the Large Blue, I’ve been intrigued by one aspect. We are told that they prefer a close-cropped sward, but there are only two animals that can produce such a thing. They are sheep, especially if they are allowed to over-graze, and rabbits. Both were introduced into Britain, sheep by neolithic farmers and rabbits by the Normans in the 111th/12th century. So my question is, how and when did the Large Blue arrive in Britain?
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Bill rabbits were introduced into Britain by the romans (although for a time this introduction was attributed to the Normans). Donkeys eat grass down to the roots (as do goats). Both were probably more common in the past.
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I was out and about today and met some Daleks.
You’ll never believe what they were saying. As spontaneous and unpredictable as someone reciting the consensus creed whenever something positive has happened.
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Jit, I would welcome your thoughts on this in the Guardian yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/26/country-diary-its-a-summer-of-love-for-the-red-soldier-beetle
” I’m not the only one struggling with the extreme temperature. Bumblebees usually throng the feral buddleia bushes and clumps of red dead-nettle that grow along the path, but today they’re conspicuous by their absence – their furry bodies make them susceptible to heat exhaustion and unable to forage or fly….
…But some like it hot. A stand of common hogweed is swarming with hundreds of common red soldier beetles (Rhagonycha fulva). These soft-bodied leatherwings are so-called as their orangey-red and black colouration is reminiscent of the red-coated uniform of the British army, but these insects prefer to make love, not war. They dedicate a significant proportion of their short lives to mating and are more popularly known as hogweed bonking beetles. True to form, pairs of insects cover the mattress-like umbels of white flowers, the smaller males piggybacking their paramours. A few females are attempting to shake off their suitors, curling their abdomens to avoid genital contact, but most couples are copulating.
As cold-blooded creatures, a whole range of their biological functions is affected by changes in their thermal environment. Beetle reproductive rates typically increase when the temperature rises, but heat stress can have a significant impact on fertility. Research shows that heatwave conditions can damage male beetle reproduction, reducing sperm production, viability and migration through the female reproductive tract, and that exposure to successive heatwaves can leave males virtually sterile.
A more recent study suggests that beetles have sophisticated mechanisms that potentially allow them to cope with temperature fluctuations. But with the climate crisis driving extreme weather events and scientists predicting that UK summer temperatures could regularly reach or exceed 40C, only time will tell whether a summer of love will continue to perpetuate the species.”
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Alan, the ants are fairly common, despite their thermophilic habit. In practice they can be found in early successional habitats, but disappear if the grass grows too long. I don’t know what toll the butterflies take on the ants. I presume it is tolerable. The author of the BBC piece did not mention that large blues are also cannibals. Charming things, butterflies.
Bill, the butterflies are quite sedentary so they must have arrived when there was still a land bridge to the continent. Presumably this occurred after some of the wildwood had already been cleared, which dates it to the mesolithic but before the inundation of Doggerland. The answer is, I dunno.
Mark, beetles have behavioural mechanisms to avoid the heat of the day. I have been on insect surveys on hot summer days and seen nothing. Returning after dark, the same areas were swarming with life.
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Richard:
INSULATE! INSULATE!
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Here’s another example of “it might be good news – BUT CLIMATE CHANGE!”
“Climate change: Avocados and exotic plants grow in hot UK summer”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62665053
“Record-breaking hot and dry weather this summer has seen more exotic plants including figs and avocadoes growing in the UK, gardeners have told BBC News.
It’s part of a trend of Mediterranean and sub-tropical plants thriving in recent years, they say.”
Good news, perhaps? Not so fast:
“But scientists warn that lack of water in the future could threaten plants.”
And, perhaps inevitably, that message of nothing good coming from climate change is reinforced at the end of the article:
“But experts are also warning that a continuation of hot dry summers like the one seen this year will negatively impact crops as all plants need water to grow and establish.
“Long summers may well be initially warmly welcomed in the UK, and provide an exciting opportunity for growing new exotic food crops,” explains Chris Atkinson, a plant scientist from the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich explains.
But he warns water shortages pose a problem to effectively growing any type of plant.”
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“‘Extinct’ butterfly species reappears in UK”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65804939
It couldn’t possibly have happened despite (or, Heavens above, even because of) climate change, so we are told this:
They might be right for all I know. Yet no evidence at all is supplied for the claim that they must have been released by unknown persons for unknown reasons.
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Mark, this sort of thing may have something to do with it!
I’m not sure why this beast became extinct, but I can hazard that habitat loss was quite important. It was widespread before retreating to its last stronghold in Kent. It was once a pest of fruit trees. Should you be tempted, you can buy them here: https://www.wwb.co.uk/spring-and-summer-eggs-and-larvae-order-now-for-supply-in-season
Now that I’ve had a look, I’m sorely tempted to have a go myself!
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