Butterfly populations on Orchid Island changing

Jason Yeh, director of the Taipei Zoo, told reporters that a butterfly research team of zoo workers and students from National Taiwan University and National Taiwan Normal University has monitored butterfly communities on Orchid Island for two years and has found an apparent change in the population structure of various species.

Yeh said the population of Catopyrops ancyra almora — a lycaenid butterfly originating in the Philippines — has established a stable foothold on Orchid Island after the species was first discovered there in 1998.

He also noted that on Nov. 23, the research team, working with two biologists from Japan, caught a tagged blue-mottled butterfly, or Parantica sita niphonica, that had been released from the island of Kamigoto in Nagasaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan.

It was the second time a tagged butterfly of this species released in Kamigoto was found to have made a long-distance migration to Orchid Island, with the first sighting reported in 2007.

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