Annual Butterfly Identification and Monitoring Workshop
April 6, 2024
The Geauga Parks systems is partnering with Ohio Lepidopterists, The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the Ohio Biological Survey to present this workshop. The workshop runs from 10 AM to 4:30 PM (registration and snacks at 9:30 AM) on April 6, 2024. Sessions are concurrent so participants can focus on those topics of interest to them.
Cost: $20.00 with lunch, $ 7.00 without lunch
Snacks and materials are included with registration
One session will include extensive identification training, covering every butterfly likely to be seen in Ohio. A concurrent session will include topics such as plants that butterflies depend on, life cycles, and gardening to attract butterflies. Other topics will include highlights of the 2023 season, how to set up and monitor your transect, telling moths from butterflies, how to mount and preserve specimens, population trends, and other topics. There will be lots of good handouts. Specimens and posters will be on display. The workshop is deigned to be useful to everyone from the person who just wants to know a few butterflies when they see them to the long term monitor and the serious lepidopterist.
Butterfly monitors follow Ohio’s butterfly populations. They identify long term down trends before species are gone and observe changes due to global warming. Teams of monitors, trained by butterfly experts, look at butterflies weekly and they are the first to notice population changes, temporary breeding colonies of subtropical butterflies in Ohio, new species moving into Ohio and perhaps other trends. Just as bird surveys record changing bird populations in response to global warming, butterfly monitoring is equally valuable and is a predictor for other invertebrate species as well.
