Bad at Goodbyes

Rough Transcript

Intro 00:05

Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.

On today’s show we consider the Sinai Baton Blue Butterfly.

Species Information 02:05

The Sinai Baton Blue, is one of the world’s smallest butterflies, roughly the size of a thumbnail. Like look at your thumbnail and imagine a butterfly, it’s so tiny.

Its body is long and cylindrical, approximately a quarter inch in length, with a wingspan roughly three quarters of an inch wide.

It has a segmented body divided into three main sections: the head, thorax, and abdomen.

Two antennae are attached at the top of the head. These antennae are sense organs tuned to the smell of flowers, nectar, and to the pheromones of potential mates. They’re also thought to aid the butterfly in balance and directionality. Flying things have a different relationship to up and down compared to like walking beings. And so the antennae help the butterfly locate itself in space.

The butterfly has two compound eyes on the sides of its head. Compound eyes are made up of many small ommatidia, which are these clusters of photoreceptor cells that are pointed in slightly different directions. This allows the butterfly to see forwards, backwards, above and below themselves all at the same time, as well as interpret color and ultraviolet light. Their brain stitches all of this information together into a kind of fractured composite image of the world.

At the front underside of the head is the proboscis, the butterfly’s like mouth, mouthpart. It is a small wire-like structure that uncurls outward to drink liquids like water and nectar, like a straw.

The thorax is the middle section of the butterfly’s body, with six legs attached to the underside. These legs are for walking and climbing and balancing, and also for tasting. Butterfly feet, called tarsus, have specialized receptors that pickup chemical information from the surfaces they land on, like leaves and petals, which helps them identify potential food sources and promising host plants for their young.

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In the dream colors, enormous. In the dream colors, enormous, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic, savory, and sweet. Magenta, Mauve, Blush, Primrose, Pinks, Pale, Antique, Cream, Candle, Whites, Kelly, Ecru, Emerald, Seafoam, Greens. And also all the new colors I now can see beyond and between the colors I’ve known. Color I can smell on the wind, color I can taste as I brush against it. In my language there is no name for the flavor of flower-petal against fingertip. There is no word for the taste of greenleaf on skin. Our earth holds a secret world of stunning abundance, much that I can never know. And so instead I dream. I dream.

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Most butterfly, including the Sinai Baton Blue have four wings, two upper wings, and two lower hindwings, that are all attached to very strong thorax muscles that flap the wings in conjunction. 

The wings are covered in tiny, thread, or hairlike color scales. These scales, unique to butterflies and moths, present in three types: pigmented, diffractive, and androconia. Pigment scales hold colored chemicals that absorb some colors and reflect others. Diffractive scales, diffract light, like a prism resulting in iridescent and metallic colors. And the androconia scales produce pheromones, used for communication.

On the Sinai Baton Blue, the upper side of the wings, the dorsal side, displays a vibrant blue hue, diffractive scales. The ventral side, which is the underside, of the wings presents a complex pattern of white and brown and orange markings, with a series of black spots.

Those patterns are adapted to work as camouflage in the native habitat. And the then bright reflective side can be flashed open to surprise predators, or as a showy display to attract mates.

Butterfly wings also play an important role in thermoregulation. Butterfly are cold blooded, and will close their wings to retain body heat or in the sun, open their wings to direct warming light onto their thorax. And of course, butterfly use their wings to fly. 

All butterfly wings are, of course, like totally remarkable, and for me, the Sinai Baton Blue is a special case because it is so small, the tiny details in its patterning, the striking richness of its dorsal wing coloring, that it can like fly at all. So little and so so amazing.

Okay and the third segment of the butterfly’s body, the abdomen, holds vital organs. Its digestive tract, its respiratory system and its reproductive organs. Digestive tract processes nectar and expels waste. Butterfly breathe through spiracles which are these tiny holes, mostly clustered on the abdomen, that connect to tubes that spread oxygen throughout the body.

The Sinai Baton Blue reproduces sexually, there are female butterfly and male. Those reproductive organs are clustered near the tip of the abdomen.

Sinai Baton Blues have not been observed demonstrating courtship ritual, males simply attempt to mate upon finding a willing female. Females signal unwillingness by curling their abdomen, spreading wings, or flying away. But if the female is willing, the pair position themselves in a tail-to-tail orientation, with their abdomens joining at the tips.

The male possesses a specialized organ that transfers a sperm packet (called a spermatophore) to the female. The spermatophore contains genetic information (in the sperm) and nutrients that the female can use to nourish herself and the developing eggs. After copulation, which for the Sinai Baton Blue takes about an hour, the butterfly separate and the fertilized eggs gestate for about a day within the female’s abdomen before they are laid.

Sinai Baton Blue are extremely selective when it comes to laying their eggs. They exclusively lay 20-30 eggs on the budding flower clusters of Sinai Thyme plants. That’s T H Y M E, like the herb. Just want to underline that: They only lay eggs on the flowering buds of this specific plant, the Sinai Thyme.

Scientists have also observed a preference for flower clusters that haven’t already been used by other butterfly, and the mothers also seem to assess the developmental stage of the plant favoring those with more flower clusters, just starting to bud. So, very specific needs.

The eggs typically hatch within 3-7 days, depending on environmental conditions. The newly hatched larvae are tiny, less than a 16th of an inch, with a dark brown head and pale body. They eat their way out of the egg and begin to feed on the thyme buds. Larvae have only ever been observed feeding on Sinai Thyme. And they were never observed even moving between Sinai thyme plants, they come into adulthood, through stages of growth, molting, and metamorphosis on the same individual plant they were hatched on.

Sinai Baton Blue larvae have a highly specialized symbiotic relationship with two species of local ants: L. obtusa and M. niloticum. The larvae possess two organs singularity adapted to nurturing and communication with these ant species. One is a nectary organ, which secretes sugary droplets, a reward, for the ants, and the other tentacular organ, which releases signals of alert or danger, communicating with the ants when the larvae is threatened. So the Baton Blue larvae provides food for the ants, and the ants will come when called to provide protection for the larvae when it is threatened by predators.

After about 21 days of feeding and growing on Sinai Thyme buds, the larvae descend to the base of the plant and form pupae, entering a dormant stage that lasts through the winter. They later emerge in late spring, ready for reproduction, as fully adult butterflies.

That process from slow-inching larvae to sleeping pupa to flying butterfly is totally like miraculous and we’ve already covered a lot of awe-making material with the Sinai Blue, so I’m going to save the details of that that growth and transformation process which is similar across butterfly species, for a future episode. So, for now we’re just going to go with larvae goes in – It’s autumn, it’s winter, it’s spring, butterfly comes out.

Butterfly comes out at the roots of the Sinai thyme where it hatched, will spend its adulthood feeding on the nectar from the flowers of the Sinai Thyme, spreading the plants pollen, helping the thyme reproduce, and then before the end of its short roughly 6 day adult life, the Sinai Baton Blue will reproduce, laying eggs in the same patch of Thyme where it was born.

The Sinai Baton Blue butterfly is exclusively found on the slopes of Mount Sinai, in a roughly 5 sq mile, high-altitude region of the Saint Katherine Protectorate, a National Park, in south of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, roughly 200 miles SE of Cairo. This is a temperate arid biome characterized by mountainous terrain with deep valleys and steep slopes, with peaks reaching over 7000 feet above sea level.

Summer temperatures reach highs in the mid 90s °F with winter lows in the teens. The region sees less than 5 inches of precipitation, annually. Though in the winters, the mountains are blanketed in snow. That snow melts seeping into the ground and providing the area with almost all its water for the dry spring, summer and autumn months.

The Sinai Baton Blue shares its habitat with Nubian Ibex, Rosemary, Field Cricket, Sinai Primrose, Rock Hyrax, Horsemint, Red Fox, Sinai Agama Lizard, Sage, Mountain Hawthorn, Golden Spiny Mouse, Wild Fig, and of course Sinai Thyme.

The major threats to the Sinai Baton Blue butterfly are not to the immediate population itself but to their singular habitat, specifically their host plant the Sinai Thyme. It’s estimated that human induced climate change will result in 3-4 degree temperature rise in this region, leading to an additional month of drought each year, a reduction of viable habitat for the Sinai Thyme and loss of available resources for the butterfly, its larvae and its symbiotic ant partners.

The Sinai Thyme is also threatened with overgrazing by domesticated livestock, goats and sheep, and by overharvesting for medicinal purposes.

Fortunately the Sinai Baton Blue’s entire, albeit small, habitat falls within the Saint Katherine Protectorate, an Egyptian national park. And in 2009 a Saint Catherine-based two-pronged conservation and education program was initiated to reach out to both itinerant shepherds and local schoolchildren. To discourage overfeeding and inspire wilderness protection in future generations.

Nevertheless, the Sinai Baton Blue butterfly was added to the IUCN red list of critically endangered species in 2010, and their population is in decline.

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 2000 Sinai Baton Blue Butterfly remain in the wild.

Citations 23:30

IUCN – https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/195289/2376696

Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory – https://www.cambridgebutterfly.com/all-about-butterflies/

Egyptian Journal of Biology, vol 8 – https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ejb/article/view/56534

Wandering Through Wadi’s Third Edition by Bernadette Simpson – https://wanderingthroughwadis.com/

The Rufford Foundation – https://www.rufford.org/

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudophilotes_sinaicus 

Music 24:56

Pledge 33:44

I honor the lifeforce of the Sinai Baton Blue butterfly. I will carry its human name in my record. I am grateful to have shared time on our bright planet with this being. I lament the ways in which I and my species have harmed and diminished this species.

And so, in the name of the Sinai Baton Blue butterfly I pledge to reduce my consumption. And my carbon footprint. And curb my wastefulness. I pledge to acknowledge and attempt to address the costs of my actions and inactions. And I pledge to resist the harm of plant or animal kin or their habitat, by corporations and governments.

I pledge my song to the witness and memory of all life, to a broad celebration of biodiversity, and to the total liberation of all beings.