Asian Butterfly Discovered to Have Reached Hawaii–How Remains Mystery

A butterfly species that lives in Southeast Asia and some parts of Africa has been discovered on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

If the butterfly arrived by migrating or via human transportation remains unknown.

The discovery was made by a man named Jim Snyder, who has been photographing and observing butterfly species since his childhood.  When walking one day in March near the Waikiki library he noticed a unique set of butterflies that had different eye and wing colors compared to other species living in Hawaii. He also observed that they flew low to the ground– another unusual trait for the locality. There were only sixteen other species known to live on Hawaii’s islands prior to Snyder’s find.

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With the help of Daniel Rubinoff, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the butterfly species has now been identified as Zizina otis, known commonly as the lesser grass blue. The lesser grass blue lives in Southeast Asia, some parts of Africa, and now Hawaii. Rubinoff remarked to the Star Bulletin that “its migration here is ‘pretty remarkable.’”

My personal question though is what evidence Rubinoff has to know that this is true? I don’t mean the question disrespectfully, but why isn’t it possible that the butterflies were brought to Hawaii by a human being or by chance via some other form of human transportation? It’s certainly not impossible given that brown tree snakes have occasionally arrived to Hawaii via planes coming from Guam.

Since the time of his initial discovery of the lesser grass blue, Snyder has found about 20-30 more individuals. It is also worth mentioning that the first pair he saw included a female that was laying eggs. In other words, breeding is taking place successfully on the island. Snyder has said that although the species is exotic, he hasn’t seen any signs yet to see it as an ecological problem.

I hope he’s right. It will be interesting if we can eventually find out how the lesser grass blue got to Hawaii. Anyone want to put their money on some relation to global climate change?

Photo Credit: * etoile on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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