UC Davis has put up a new butterfly site by Art Shapiro, which consists of information about butterflies and their habitats in California as gathered by Dr. Shapiro over a 34-year period.

The front page has a helpful left nav consisting of butterfly taxonomy, but for those of us who’re a little rusty, a nav at the top allows you to browse butterfly information by common name. The butterflies are divided into six groups, with each group having its own page and list of butterflies. The Gossamer-wings, for example, range from the “Agricultural” Melissa Blue to the Willow Hairstreak. There are over 150 butterfly species covered at this site.

Each type of butterfly has its own page, with an overview of its habits and habitats, and a list of places where it’s been spotted. (Click on a site and you’ll get graphs of spotting over the last 30+ years and a probability graph for spotting the butterfly at any given point in the year.) There are also butterfly images, though unfortunately most of the pages I saw had only one image.

(UC Davis probably wants to protect the site, but this would be a great place to insert a Flickr search. I mean, if someone is putting up a picture and tagging it Willow Hairstreak, it’s probably going to be a butterfly. It’s not like any of these things are named Fred.)

In addition to the individual butterfly pages there are several other sections on this site, including an education area (“Meet the Lepidopteran Detective”), a library (ah, a call for photos), and a “Data Depot” (34+ years of butterfly observation data for you to splash around in.)

More pictures!

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