Disney's Animals, Science, and Environment, The Walt Disney Company, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA.
The Butterfly Biosphere, Thanksgiving Point Institute, Lehi, Utah, USA.
Zoo Biol. 2021 Sep;40(5):429-435. doi: 10.1002/zoo.21628. Epub 2021 Jun 14.
Raising insects in a laboratory for release into the wild is a common conservation practice, but maintaining breeding colonies year-round can be limited by seasonal food availability. Food availability is particularly challenging for insects which depend on specific host plants. For example, our early efforts to rear the imperiled Atala hairstreak butterfly (Eumaeus atala Poey) resulted in colony failure during winter due to lack of food. To overcome this barrier, we developed a modified freeze-dried host plant diet to support the colony. The diet consisted of reconstituted freeze-dried leaves and stems from fresh-growth coontie (Zamia integrifolia), the host plant for the Atala butterflies. We fed larvae less than 9 mm on this freeze-dried diet and transferred them to live coontie plants after they were more than 9 mm. We reared a colony of Atala butterflies using these methods for 859 days, resulting in more than 3400 animals released into the wild. Comparing colony counts during that time period to the 548 days we reared them without modified freeze-dried diet showed a clear benefit in using freeze-dried diet. A growth trial (N = 40) of larvae fed on only freeze-dried diet compared to larvae fed on fresh coontie cuttings found no significant difference in larval or pupal development between groups (p = 0.71 and p = 0.47, respectively). We, therefore, conclude that the freeze-dried diet provided an appropriate alternative for Atala colonies when fresh growth from the host plant is unavailable, and we recommend use of this technique for raising other host plant-dependent insect species of conservation concern.
在实验室中饲养昆虫并将其释放到野外是一种常见的保护实践，但全年维持繁殖群体可能会受到季节性食物供应的限制。对于依赖特定宿主植物的昆虫来说，食物供应尤其具有挑战性。例如，我们早期努力饲养濒危的 Atala 凤蝶（Eumaeus atala Poey），由于缺乏食物，导致冬季群体失败。为了克服这一障碍，我们开发了一种改良的冻干宿主植物饮食来支持群体。这种饮食由新鲜生长的 coontie（Zamia integrifolia）的冻干叶和茎组成，coontie 是 Atala 蝴蝶的宿主植物。我们用这种冻干饮食喂养不到 9 毫米的幼虫，当它们超过 9 毫米时，将它们转移到活的 coontie 植物上。我们使用这些方法饲养了一个 Atala 蝴蝶群体，共 859 天，释放了超过 3400 只到野外。将这段时间内的群体数量与我们没有使用改良的冻干饮食饲养的 548 天进行比较，使用冻干饮食的明显好处。一项仅用冻干饮食喂养幼虫的生长试验（N=40）与用新鲜 coontie 插条喂养的幼虫相比，两组幼虫或蛹的发育没有显著差异（p=0.71 和 p=0.47，分别）。因此，我们得出结论，当宿主植物的新鲜生长不可用时，冻干饮食为 Atala 群体提供了一种合适的替代方法，我们建议使用这种技术来饲养其他受关注的依赖宿主植物的昆虫物种。
