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Butterfly fills the void By PATTY RYAN of The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - She manages butterflies for a living.She figures she knows a boom when she sees one.
``This,'' says Autumn Eve Balthazor of the Museum of Science and Industry, ``is an extraordinary boom.''
Tampa's butterfly population - which some fretted would weaken during aerial spraying for Medflies - appears to be attempting a coup of the insect kingdom.
Some wonder if the pesticide malathion killed butterfly enemies.
Balthazor's convinced.
``The population of flies and parasitic wasps has declined to nil,'' she said Thursday. ``I see very few of them.''
``That's a reasonable assumption,'' said butterfly expert Jacqueline Miller at the Allen Museum of Entomology in Sarasota.
``It is possible, although there is no solid evidence of it, that the predators have been depleted,'' said entomologist Bill Kern of the Pinellas County Agricultural Extension Service.
Other theories: Early migration. Lack of hard rain to knock eggs from trees. Early fall weather.
``We've had some cooler temperatures the last couple of days,'' Kern said. ``When you have a heat index over 107 you tend not to get the butterflies flying around as much. They sit tight.''
Whatever the reason, they're here.
Butterboomers. Hungry. Coming to nectar near you.
Orange ones, yellow ones, black ones.
Big ones, little ones.
``We have a butterfly garden out back and it's just crazy with them,'' said Jo Ann Hoffman at the Hillsborough County Agricultural Extension Service.
They fly through Frank's Nursery and Crafts on South Dale Mabry Highway, where customers marvel.
``We have some beautiful butterflies,'' said nursery manager Lorene Tice. ``The little kids, they get to chasing them.''
Where one finds butterflies, one finds caterpillars, and disappearing foliage.
Tice gets rid of them.
Hoffman knows what happens when you don't.
Monarch caterpillars like milkweed, she said.
``At home I have milkweed sticks with a few caterpillars that are rapidly starving to death. There's no more milkweed,'' she said.
Balthazor fears that moth caterpillars - generally more destructive to home gardens - will encourage a secondary round of pesticide use by homeowners.
She suggests use of natural remedies such as thuricide, a bacteria that affects only caterpillars.
She also worries that adult butterflies will starve, appearing in large numbers and depleting a narrow range of nectar sources.
``When I can go into the garden and walk up to a wild butterfly and lift it off a plant, that animal has sacrificed its safety for food,'' Balthazor said.
``It's kind of tragic. But if it does excite enough interest in the natural environment, this short-term tragedy will turn into a long-term gain,'' she said.
``With people becoming close to butterflies, they will be more interested and learn more about them.''
