Stupid butterfly! How dare you adapt!
(Guardian) A butterfly species whose population collapsed because of climate change and habitat loss has defied predictions of extinction to rapidly move to cooler climes and change its food plant.
The quino checkerspot (Euphydryas editha quino), found in Mexico and California, has shifted to higher altitudes and surprisingly chosen a completely different species of plant on which to lay its eggs, according to research presented at the Butterfly Conservation’s seventh international symposium in Southampton.
In reality, the quino checkerspot butterfly was mostly endangered by habitat loss. But, hey, like every real environmental issue, the nutballs have to make it about “climate change”. And they throw their belief in Darwinism out the window. Fortunately, the butterfly is smarter than the Warmists, and simply adapted. Like it surely did when the climate turned colder during the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Warm Period. The Dark Ages. The Roman Warm period. Etc.
Several other butterfly species have been changing habitat or diet to cope with a changing climate but the quino checkerspot is the first butterfly known to science to change both so rapidly.
Many environmentalists fear that climate change is happening too quickly for species to adapt but, according to Parmesan, this surprising example shows that some apparently doomed species may be more resilient than we imagine.
Of course, the Warmists have to continue to push doom and gloom for species.
But the international symposium also heard strong scientific evidence that climate change will create more losers than winners because unspoilt habitat is so fragmented, preventing many butterflies, moths and other insects from moving to more suitable places. Tom Oliver of the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology told the symposium that scientific modelling predicted a number of UK butterfly extinctions by the middle of this century.
If the models are anything like the temperature models, butterflies should be just fine. Most life has adapted throughout the Holocene and the back and forth climates.
