Thursday, August 17, 2017
2–3 p.m.
Alsdorf Auditorium, Regenstein Center
Free

Learn about South American butterflies with Doug Taron, Chief Curator of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

At just slightly smaller than Nevada, Ecuador is home to more than 4,000 species of butterflies—over five times the species diversity of the United States and Canada combined. This talk will explore a sampling of the butterflies from three distinct Ecuadorian life zones. We will explore  dazzling tropical species from the floodplain of the Rio Napo, a major tributary of the Amazon. From higher elevations we will visit the butterflies of the cloud forest as well as a mixture of familiar and exotic species from the páramo, the high elevation grassland found above treeline.

Photo: Malachite butterfly (Siproeta stelenes), a native of Brazil