Cayo ranch studies butterfly species
Everyone’s heard of the Belize Zoo, the Baboon Sanctuary in Bermudian Landing, or the Jaguar Reserve in the Cockscomb, but you probably never heard of the Green Hills Butterfly Ranch. After this next story, however, you may want to take a trip to this corner of the Cayo District that’s doing big things with little wings. Janelle Chanona fell in love with the butterfly trail, and we bet you will too.
Janelle Chanona
“It was not the first butterfly house in Belize but it is the only place where butterflies are being studied. Because of the research being done by Jan Meerman at the Green Hills Butterfly Ranch, we know more about Belizean butterflies than ever before.”
When Meerman began his work three years ago, only a hundred and fifty species of butterflies had been documented in Belize. Meerman’s scientific curiosity over the past ten years has led him to discover about an additional six hundred and fifty species. Besides their obvious differences in color and size, he has learnt that while some butterflies live for about a week, others can survive as long as six months. His research also reveals that each species uses one kind of plant to lay its eggs. Other butterfly habits are even more bizarre.
Jan Meerman, Butterfly Researcher
“There’s a butterfly we’re experimenting with now and we found out unless the leaf is folded in a certain way, she will not lay her eggs. So you can put in ten plants but if there is not the right shape of leaf, you won’t get eggs. So some of them are very, very specific and well, it’s fun to find out.”
Meerman began by collecting as many different species as possible from the wild and hoped that the females had already mated. The tricky part was figuring out the specific conditions each butterfly needed to lay its eggs. Those eggs he collects are tenderly nurtured from egg… to pupa… to caterpillar… to butterfly.
Janelle Chanona
“While they may not be as smart as they are beautiful, butterflies are able to communicate with each other, use complicated means of self defense and some species, like the owl butterfly, use scent to recognize each other… a scent so strong even I can tell this is a female and this is a male.”
Meerman has also observed butterflies talking to each other. This male is trying to mate with a female but by holding her wings flat out, she is telling him, “No!” There are butterflies that bluff their way to safety by pretending to be a larger animal. Others “talk” by displaying bright colors, which in nature usually means danger, to say, “Don’t eat me.” But according to Meerman even if they don’t say so, eating butterflies is not a very good idea.
Jan Meerman
“Many of these butterflies that you see in here today contain enough poison to kill a bird or something like that. Of course they are harmless; they won’t bite you but if you would eat them first of all they would taste very bad and they could actually, I don’t know how many butterflies you would have to eat to die, but I think it could happen.”
Meerman believes that even though most insects function on an instinctual level, some of the behavior exhibited by butterflies indicates that they are capable of learning.
Jan Meerman
“They can definitely learn. This butterfly has landed on my hand because it has learnt that the visitors come in here. They can provide sweat and every now and then there’s someone that actually learns that you cannot just sweat, take sweat from it’s forehead, or it’s hand, you can also go to someone’s mouth and drink directly from your mouth.”
One of the most amazing things he has learnt through his butterfly study has been the unique relationship between plants and butterflies. One butterfly known as the “Postman” visits the same female plants every morning at the same time like a postman making his rounds. Using the butterfly’s habit to its advantage, the plant changes its sex overnight, from female to male, to trick the butterfly into pollination.
Since the plants depend on butterflies to pollinate, Meerman says it is interesting to note that the butterfly population fluctuates. He attributes this to tiny parasites that inject their eggs into pupae and even caterpillars, bringing the butterfly population down. But as soon as the butterflies become less, these parasites lose their food source and they die, giving the butterflies a chance to increase their numbers. Then the cycle repeats itself. Meerman says if butterflies bred in captivity were released, they would only disturb nature’s delicate balance.
Jan Meerman
“If you release a lot of butterflies the only thing you’re doing is maintaining a high population for those parasites and you can actually wipe out a local population by feeding those parasites. So actually it is very dangerous to release butterflies.”
Even if the butterfly’s habitats were being destroyed, Meerman says releasing them into the wild would serve no purpose since they wouldn’t have anywhere to lay their eggs. But unlike other countries, butterflies in Belize are not in danger.
Jan Meerman
“Here in Belize, we haven’t done that… yet. Some habitats are disappearing quickly but basically Belize is still healthy and I don’t think any of those eight hundred butterflies is in any real danger at the moment.”
There may be hidden benefits in butterfly research but according to Meerman, they do not yet include money. He has been supporting his research by doing consultancy work and, for the past year and a half, has been shipping pupae to butterfly houses in the United States where tourists can watch them become butterflies. In Florida alone, butterfly houses attract more than one million people a year… a small percentage of which Meerman would eagerly welcome to Green Hills Butterfly Ranch.
Janelle Chanona for News Five.
Jan Meerman ships pupae to North Carolina, Florida and Texas. He first came to Belize to work as a manager for the Shipstern Nature Reserve in Corozal.
