Sean Ryan

Sean Ryan

Oct 17, 2014

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Observations from one of our citizen scientists

One of our citizen scientist's Ansel Oommen raised some cabbage whites this summer and noticed how variable the color of their chrysalis can be. Being a little inquisitive, he did a little experiment to see how the colors in the caterpillars environment might affect the color of their chrysalis. This is something called "phenotypic plasticity" (an organisms phenotype - how it looks and behaves - can be altered by its environment) and has been observed in many other butterflies. He placed different colored tissue paper (green or white) or different materials - cardboard and potted plants - at their pupation site (where they turn from a caterpillar to a chrysalis) and he found... it did influence their color! 


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About This Project

Climate change will dramatically alter the planet’s
biodiversity, yet we know little about how most species will be impacted.

This summer we launched a citizen science project that partners with the public to help collect a invasive butterfly–the cabbage white–from across the world to study how the environment affects the traits and genes of this butterfly.

This research will improve our ability to predict how species respond to climate change.
Blast off!

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