If you wandered through a Midwestern meadow in 1992 to look for butterflies, the odds are good you would have seen many more than if you returned to the same meadow today. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now.
Log in or Join now . It’s no secret of course that much of the order Lepidoptera—which includes butterflies, moths and skippers—is in trouble. But new information emerges when scientists can get their hands on more than 4.
But new information emerges when scientists can get their hands on more than 4. 3 million butterfly observations taken over more than three decades. The massive dataset, collected across the United States Midwest, contained counts of more than 136 different species, including monarchs and swallowtails.