Scientists in Alaska recently discovered a potentially new insect species — the Tanana Arctic , orOeneis tanana , a copper - gloss critter that may be the state ’s only endemical butterfly . accord toNational Geographic , it ’s the first new butterfly stroke discovered in Alaska in 28 twelvemonth .
News of the butterfly stroke ’s find was lately bring out in theJournal of Research on the Lepidoptera . The insect was identify by the field of study ’s atomic number 27 - author , Andrew Warren , a butterfly expert at the University of Florida in Gainesville . In 2010 , while peruse a collection of butterfly specimen at the Florida Museum of Natural History , Warren spotted a fly tool labeled as the Chryxus Arctic butterfly . However , its offstage colouration was a little off , and its size and procreative part were n’t a lucifer .
Warren team up with a mass of other scientists from disjoined institutions to help him identify the butterfly . Eventually , a equal sequenced its deoxyribonucleic acid and discovered it was characteristic of a different coinage .
Turns out , the Tanana Arctic has been mistake for the Chryxus for years . wayward to researchers ' long - held impression , it was an solely raw species , not a variant of Chryxus . The Tanana Arctic live in the spruce and aspen forest of central Alaska ’s Tanana - Yukon River Basin . It likely arose as a cross of the Chryxus Arctic and the White - veined Arctic butterfly stroke during the last Ice Age , between 28,000 and 14,000 old age ago .
The being might give new insights into the pace of Arctic climate change , The Washington Postpoints out . butterfly are tender to temperature shift , so if the cold - weather insect ever leave its longtime home in the Tanana River valley , scientist will know something ’s up .
investigator plan to sequence the Tanana Arctic ’s genome to take whether it has any extra traits that helped it outlast in its immobilize home . As of now , studies are needed to resolve for indisputable that it ’s a new species , but experts believe there ’s compelling evidence to hold the hypothesis .
[ h / tNational Geographic ]
