Massachusetts Butterfly Club

Potluck Dinner, Slide Presentation & Speaker

The 2011 Spring meeting of the MBC was held Saturday, March 19, 2011 at the Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Worcester.

As usual, we began with an excellent pot luck dinner with plenty of food for everybody.

Following the dinner, MBC member Tom Murray lead off the evening's program with a presentation on how members can improve their digital butterfly photographs.

Our featured speaker was Professor Richard Primack of Boston University. He presented "Effects of climate change on the plants, birds and butterflies of Massachusetts" relating to his studies of the effect of global warming on the activities of butterflies and other insects.

For the past 8 years, Professor Richard Primack and Graduate Student Caroline Polgar of Boston University, along with many colleagues, have been investigating how warming temperatures have been affecting plants and animals in Massachusetts. By comparing Henry David Thoreau's journals with current observations, they have been able to document that plants are now flowering and leafing out earlier and changing in abundance. For the past 5 months they have been working with a new team, including Sharon Stichter of the MBC and Colleen Hitchcock, to analyze the impacts of climate change on 12 Massachusetts butterflies. This will be the first public presentation of what they have discovered.

Many thanks to all who volunteered and attended.