Fresh Sheet – June 28, 2014

This week’s shipment of 400 butterfly pupae comes from Malaysia. Stop by our Tropical Butterfly House and watch them emerge.



Tropical Entomological House
Malaysia

10 - Athyma perius (Common Sergeant)
20 - Catopsilia pomona (Lemon Emigrant)
10 - Catopsilia scylla (Orange Emigrant)
10 - Cethosia biblis (Red Lacewing)
64 - Cethosia cyane (Leopard Lacewing)
13 - Cethosia hypsea (Malay Lacewing)
15 - Doleschalia bisaltide (Autumn Leaf)
01 - Euploea phaenareta (Great Crow)
07 - Hypolimnas bolina (Blue moon)
45 - Idea leuconoe (Paper Kite)
05 - Precis almana (Peacock Pansy)
40 - Papilio polytes (Polite Swallowtail)
70 - Parthenos sylvia violaceae (Violet Clipper)
20 - Tirumala septentrionis (Dark Blue Tiger)
70 - Vindula dejone (The Cruiser)

Total = 400

“Fresh Sheet” is our weekly shipment report of pupae on display in the emerging window. Visit Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House and meet our newest residents.


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Pollinator Week: Sunday

What You Can Do

The week is over but the work continues. Grow your own pollinator garden! All you need is a garden or a parking strip or even just some planting containers. Then choose your plants. It helps if they bloom at different times so there are flowers throughout the year.

• Select plants with a long bloom time, bright colors, and diverse flower shapes.

• Learn what visits your garden, and start adding plants that those species favor.

• Support pollinators’ entire life cycle. Provide appropriate host plants for young pollinators to eat.

• Be aware of pesticide use in your community and try to eliminate pesticides and herbicides from your garden.

• Habitat is only helpful if pollinators can reach it. Gardeners can help pollinators by talking to each other and to their communities about creating corridors of pollinator-friendly plants.

For more information and ecoregional planting guides, visit the Pollinator Partnership at http://www.pollinator.org/guides.htm and the Xerces Society at http://www.xerces.org.


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Fresh Sheet – June 21, 2014

It wouldn’t be Pollinator Week without an acknowledgement of the beautiful pollinators in our Tropical Butterfly House. This week’s pupae shipment comes from El Salvador.



Bioproductores de El Salvador

25 - Battus belus (Belus Swallowtail)
25 - Caligo memnon (Owl Butterfly)
09 - Catonephele numilia (Numilia)
20 - Consul fabius (Tiger Leafwing)
25 - Eurytides branchus (Dual-spotted Swallowtail)
09 - Eurytides thymbraeus(White-crested Swallowtail)
12 - Heliconius erato (Small Postman)
10 - Heliconius hecale (Tiger Longwing)
10 - Heliconius hortense (Mountain Longwing)
09 - Heliconius ismenius (Ismenius Longwing)
20 - Lycorea cleobaea (Large Tiger)
50 - Morpho polyphemus (White Morpho)
25 - Myscelia ethusa (Royal Blue Butterfly)
25 - Papilio erostratus (Dusky Swallowtail)
10 - Papilio torquatus (Band-gapped Swallowtail)
15 - Archeoprepona demophon (One-spotted Prepona)
25 - Tithorea harmonia (Harmonia Tigerwing)

Total = 324

“Fresh Sheet” is our weekly shipment report of pupae on display in the emerging window. Visit Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House and meet our newest residents.


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Pollinator Week: Friday

Do the Waggle Dance!

At a recent Pacific Science Center All Staff Meeting, Animal Caretaker Katie Malmberg and Life Sciences Manager Sarah Moore presented their somewhat anthropomorphized version of the bee waggle dance. Watch how bees communicate to each other about food sources.



Trouble viewing? Visit http://youtu.be/BYu5L5DK3Fk

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Pollinator Week: Thursday

Pollinator monitoring in the garden

This spring, you might see clusters of volunteers walking earnestly along next to our new Pollinator Garden, talking, pointing, and making little marks on a clipboard. They are monitoring the garden, either for bloom time or for pollinator activity.

Pollinator monitoring goes like this: The volunteers scan the area around them, taking their time and looking everywhere. Each time they see a bee, butterfly, hummingbird, or other pollinator, they mark its presence on the tally sheet.

So far this year, we have seen very few pollinators. The bloom monitoring might explain this. Our plants are tiny and so far there have been just a few flowers. Most pollinators are attracted to large clusters of blossoms, and our new plants need more time before they can produce a sufficient amount of flowers. But if we start our records now, we hope that this time next year we will have much larger numbers of winged visitors. Pollinator Week 2015 will show that the plants really are attracting the species for which they were planted.


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Pollinator Week: Wednesday

The Psiguria Vine in our Tropical Butterfly House is flowering! In the past, our horticulture team has had trouble getting this vine to flower. Psiguria Vine, Psiguria umbrosa, is a very slender plant that has toppled, broken, or sprouted in areas where we couldn’t support it. But with coaxing and teamwork, we finally got it growing.

Growing in our Tropical Butterfly House, this wonderful little vine has a very special pollination relationship with one family of butterflies: the Heliconiidae. Heliconius (long wing) butterflies visit Psiguria Vines every day not only for nectar but also for pollen. While most butterflies can’t digest pollen, this group of Lepidoptera can digest pollen from this flower – and it helps them live for much longer than most butterflies –sometimes for four months or more!

Psiguria Vine is monoecious, meaning it has separate male and female flowers on the same vine. To produce fruit, a pollinator must visit the flower – first to a male flower, then to a female. So the plant and the butterfly mutually benefit each other. The vine does best when there are lots of Heliconius butterflies around. Luckily, the butterflies love Psiguria and flock to it when it’s available. In fact, younger long wing butterflies learn where the vine is by following their elders.
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Pollinator Week: Tuesday

The Pollinator Garden is growing! In May, we wrote about the lovely plants on the south walkway to the Boeing IMAX Theater, and now we have plants on both sides of the path!

Some of the new plants in the Pollinator Garden are nectar providers; others are host plants for native butterfly species. There is even a little area that we created to allow ground-nesting bees to build their homes.

So far, these plants are still small, and probably won’t attract huge numbers of pollinators till next year, but they are off to a good start! Very soon, you will smell honeysuckle and watch huckleberries ripen. Next, the buzz of bumblebees and the flutter of butterflies will (hopefully) grace the garden and bring smiles to our movie patrons.


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Pollinator Week: Monday

It’s Pollinator Week! All week long we will be celebrating by telling the stories of different pollinators here at Pacific Science Center. Let’s begin with the pollinator that came to visit:


Recently, a guest brought in a butterfly that she found near the Science Center. Our guest was concerned that it was one that had escaped from our Tropical Butterfly House. Fortunately, Lead Animal Caretaker Lauren Bloomenthal was able to identify it as a native species, Papilio rutulus, (Western Tiger Swallowtail). Lauren quickly released it back into the wild!

We get a few similar situations every summer, and we are delighted that our guests take containment so seriously. We are even more thrilled to know that the wild butterfly population is out there and that they are thriving in our dense urban setting.


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Fresh Sheet – June 14, 2014

Butterflies and moths in our Tropical Butterfly House are excited because Pollinator Week begins Monday. Stay tuned!


Suministros Entimológicos Costarricenses, SA
Costa Rica

07 - Archeoprepona demophon (One-spotted Prepona)
08 - Caligo eurilochus (Forest Giant Owl)
52 - Catonephele numilia (Numilia)
08 - Eryphanis polyxena (Purple Mort Bleu Owl)
28 - Greta oto (Glasswing)
08 - Hamadryas februa (Gray Calico)
45 - Hamadryas laodamia (Starry Calico)
06 - Heliconius clysonymus (Clysonymus Longwing)
24 - Heliconius cydno (Cydno Longwing)
47 - Heliconius doris (Doris Longwing)
45 - Heliconius hecale (Tiger Longwing)
11 - Heliconius hewitsoni (Hewitson’s Longwing)
54 - Heliconius melpomene (Postman)
30 - Heraclides anchisiades (Ruby-spotted Swallowtail)
40 - Morpho peleides (Blue Morpho)
16 - Myscelia cyaniris (Blue Wave Butterfly)
08 - Opsiphanes tamarindi (Tamarind Owl)
27 - Papilio thoas (Thoas Swallowtail)
08 - Prepona omphale (Blue Belly-Button)
08 - Siproeta epaphus (Rusty-tipped Page)

Total = 480

“Fresh Sheet” is our weekly shipment report of pupae on display in the emerging window. Visit Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House and meet our newest residents.


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Fresh Sheet – June 7, 2014

This is a great weekend to visit Pacific Science Center: A new IMAX movie is opening, there is a free viewing of “D-Day 3D” for veterans and military personnel, the fantastic SPY exhibit is continuing, and 565 pupae are now emerging in our Tropical Butterfly House.
Come see us soon!


Bioproductores de El Salvador

20 - Battus belus (Belus Swallowtail)
25 - Caligo memnon (Owl Butterfly)
20 - Catonephele numilia (Numilia)
25 - Consul fabius (Tiger Leafwing)
10 - Eurytides branchus (Dual-spotted Swallowtail)
10 - Heliconius hecale (Tiger Longwing)
10 - Heliconius ismenius (Ismenius Longwing)
15 - Lycorea cleobaea (Large Tiger)
25 - Morpho peleides (Blue Morpho)
25 - Morpho polyphemus (White Morpho)
20 - Myscelia ethusa (Royal Blue Butterfly)
10 - Papilio androgeus (Queen Page)
10 - Papilio erostratus (Dusky Swallowtail)
15 - Papilio torquatus (Band-gapped Swallowtail)
25 - Archeoprepona demophon (One-spotted Prepona)
20 - Prepona omphale (Blue Belly-Button)
10 - Tithorea harmonia (Harmonia Tigerwing)

Total = 295


Neotropical Insects NV, Suriname

45 - Battus polydamas (Polydamus Swallowtail)
06 - Heraclides thoas (Thoas Swallowtail)
07 - Heliconius melpomene (Postman)
15 - Heliconius hecale (Tiger Longwing)
45 - Dryas iulia (Julia Longwing)
42 - Anartia amathea (Scarlet Peacock)
45 - Biblis hyperia (Red Rim)
45 - Caligo memnon (Owl Butterfly)
20 - Tithorea harmonia (Harmonia Tigerwing)

Total = 270

Grand Total = 565

“Fresh Sheet” is our weekly shipment report of pupae on display in the emerging window. Visit Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House and meet our newest residents.


Read more!