Thursday
Jan272011
Polyommatus Blue Butterflies
01.27.2011 Greetings,
In a series of evolutionary waves over millions of years, Nabokov theorized they started in Asia, flew over the warm Bering Strait and down to Chile. It wasn't chilly in Chile. It was warm swarming with butterflies.
His passion as a self-taught lepidopterist into their 10 million years flight has been vindicated by gene-sequencing scientists headed by Dr. Naomi Pierce, curator of lepidoptera at Harvard. She was captivated by his idea of butterflies coming from Asia. “It was an amazing, bold hypothesis,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, we could test this.’ ”
Metta.
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