Butterfly tree of life reveals an origin in North America
About 100 million years ago, a group of trendsetting moths started flying during the day rather than at night, taking…
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Family tree of ‘boring’ butterflies shows they’re anything but
Walk a short distance through the Amazon Rainforest, and you might witness what look like dead leaves launch from the…
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Butterflies’ ‘secret’ to keeping cool hidden in wings
A butterfly’s wings are more than just eye-catching flight gear. A new study reveals microscopic structures that give butterflies their…
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Butterfly expert Thomas Emmel has died
The Florida Museum is shocked and saddened by the passing of Thomas Emmel, our colleague and friend, who died over…
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40 years of friendship, 70,000 specimens: Amateur entomologists donate lifetimes’ worth of butterflies and moths
As a 4-year-old, butterfly net in hand, Ed Knudson set out to catch insects in his neighborhood. Little did he…
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New butterfly species discovered nearly 60 years after it was first collected
In 1959, a then-teenage lepidopterist Thomas Emmel collected 13 fawn-colored butterflies in the highlands of Mexico. Nearly 60 years later,…
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New butterfly species named for Field Museum’s Emily Graslie
As the Field Museum’s chief curiosity correspondent, Emily Graslie has plunged elbow-deep into wolf guts, dug up 52-million-year-old fish fossils…
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Is Alaska’s first new butterfly species in decades an ancient hybrid?
Some might say it takes a rare breed to survive the Alaska wilderness. The discovery of a possible new species…
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A butterfly in hiding takes wing on social media
Thanks to social media and museum collections, a butterfly species was recognized in 2011 after more than 50 years of…
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New Jamaica butterfly species emphasizes need for biodiversity research
University of Florida scientists have co-authored a study describing a new Lepidoptera species found in Jamaica’s last remaining wilderness. Belonging…
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