The Sand Mountain Blue butterfly, Euphilotes pallescens arenamontana, lives on a single Nevada dune system, making it incredibly vulnerable to threats like habitat loss from off-road vehicles and climate change. Alia Donly studies its population structure and genetic diversity using both living butterflies and historical specimens from museum collections. The vast and special archives like the one at the McGuire Center let her compare past and present populations to see how much genetic diversity has been lost and what remains today. Her goal is to use this evidence to show that the subspecies is at serious risk—and to ultimately get this subspecies on the endangered species list, federally protected, and get conservation measures in place before it is lost.
There is only one generation of this butterfly each year and the caterpillars are very specialized, feeding only on Kearney Buckwheat, Erigonum nummulare. This butterfly subspecies has a special connection to the McGuire Center as it was described and named by our late collections manager, George T. Austin who spent decades studying the Lepidoptera of Nevada. Alia is a student at Utah State University and traveled to the McGuire Center to image all of our specimens and sample their DNA. Research visits like this not only help us with digitization efforts but also demonstrate the incredible value of scientific collections with long series of specimens collected over many years, each representing a snapshot in time as a biological indicator.