Quick, what's California's state insect?

"Oh," you ask, "California has a state insect?"

Yes, the California dogface butterfly--but University of California, Davis scientists say it's rarely seen in nature and rarely recognized.

That may change. The R. M. Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis has just published a first-of-its-kind poster immortalizing the dogface butterfly (Zerene eurydice).

"We hope this sparks interest in our state insect and conservation efforts," said Fran Keller, a UC Davis doctoral student of entomology who designed the poster. "The dogface butterfly is found only in California, but it's losing its natural habitat due to rapid California development."

"I've been all over California collecting beetles," Keller said, "and I have never seen a California dogface butterfly in the wild."

Nor has she seen its main host plant, False indigo (Amorpha californica), a riparian shrub that grows among poison oak and willows and along stream banks, often in steep and isolated canyons. Dogface butterfly larvae feed on the False indigo.

"Its main host in our area, the Napa False indigo, is rare and endangered," said Bohart Museum volunteer Greg Kareofelas, a Davis scientist and photographer who scanned the butterfly images for the poster. "Elsewhere in the state, its host plant is the False indigo and while not endangered, it's still difficult to find."

Rare plant botanist Kristi Lazaro of the California Native Plant Society, Sacramento, said the Napa False indigo (Amorpha californica var. napensis) is rare and threatened. "It's a perennial deciduous shrub endemic to California. It is known from approximately 45 occurrences in Marin, Monterey, Napa, and Sonoma counties. Many of these occurrences have small numbers of plants. This taxon is threatened by development and habitat conversion to vineyards."

Strengthening the link between the insect and its main host is crucial to its conservation, said Bohart Museum director Lynn Kimsey. "We need to preserve and protect that relationship."

The California dogface butterfly, so named because of the poodle-like head silhouetted on the wings of the male butterfly, officially became the state insect in 1972. Its image appeared on a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1976. This summer the distinctive butterfly has reappeared on another U.S. postal stamp: this time on a new 41-cent "pollination" stamp issued to emphasize the ecological relationship between pollinators and plants.

Keller hopes that the poster, like the first-day stamps, will be a collector's item.

"I'd like to see this poster in every classroom in California," she said. "Sometimes the best way to educate is to make something pretty."

The Bohart Museum will gift a framed copy to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this month.

The 18x24 poster, the work of volunteers Keller and Kareofelas, features a multi-colored male, sometimes called "a flying pansy," and the larger, mostly yellow female.

The male is from the Kareofelas' butterfly collection, and the female is from the Bohart Museum collection.

The fast, high-flying butterfly is elusive except when it nectars on flowers, said internationally renowned butterfly expert Art Shapiro, a UC Davis professor of evolution and ecology who co-authored the newly published Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions with T. R. Manolis (UC Press, 2007).

"I'd say only one of every 10,000 Californians has ever seen the butterfly in the wild," he said.

"People rarely see them because their habitat isn't exactly densely inhabited and they tend to fly high up in the trees," Shapiro said. "People aren't familiar with them and don't really know what to look for, or where - which is perhaps just as well for the butterfly AND for people who get poison oak!"

Shapiro, who donated more than 60,000 butterflies, including 25 to 30 dogfaces, to the Bohart Museum, said he's seen only 200 to 250 dogfaces during his 36 years of collecting butterflies. One flew across his driveway in Davis. He remembers the exact date: April 26, 1972.
The dogface butterfly was the obvious choice for state insect, he said. "In the 1920s the Lorquin Entomological Society, a Southern California club of insect fans named for Pierre Lorquin, the first known butterfly collector in the state - he was a French '49er -ran a contest to pick an unofficial state butterfly, and after intense competition, the dogface won. The other finalists were Lorquin's Admiral and the California Sister. It remained unofficial until the state insect was chosen nearly 50 years later - though it was an obvious choice."

"The dogface is largely restricted to riparian habitat in the Sacramento Valley and in the Coast Range and Sierran foothills," said Shapiro, whose study sites span Solano, Yolo, Sacramento, Nevada, Placer and Sierra counties. "But I range a lot more widely than that, though."

"Among my study sites, only Gates Canyon, near the Vacaville area, is known to have a breeding population," he said. "The adults are very strong fliers and are regularly seen in strange places, such as my driveway in Davis."

"It tends to follow riparian corridors and I have seen or caught it in ALL my low-elevation sites though it only breeds at Gates Canyon, near Vacaville, and there it breeds not in the main canyon but in side canyons that are virtually impenetrable - a common occurrence."

A population at the Bobelaine Audubon Sanctuary near Yuba City, is "perhaps the last in this part of the valley," Shapiro said.

"One of the easier places to see the butterfly is on the Knoxville-Berryessa Road--the one you take from Highway 128 to go to the UC McLaughlin Preserve," the professor said. "I see at least one on almost every trip up that way before mid-July. It's usually at least 20 feet up. I've seen it near Calistoga and near The Geysers. And the strongest north state colony I know is near Auburn, Placer County, but I deliberately do not give directions to colonies because I don't want it overcollected."

Dogface adults apparently hibernate, Shapiro said. They begin flying in March before their host plant, False indigo, leafs out. A new brood arrives in late spring/early summer, and apparently another in September-October, but rarely in November.

Shapiro said the dogface males fly a beat, often zooming down a canyon then repeatedly turning around and heading back up again. Both sexes fly 15 to 20 feet off the ground. They dip down to visit such flowers as California buckeye, thistles, tall blue verbena but seldom linger long.

Kareofelas praised Shapiro's expertise in finding the fast, high-flying butterfly. "In many of Art's transects (paths where he records and counts occurrences), he sees it quite commonly, but, he knows what to look for and where to look for it. The average person will rarely, if ever see it. We who see it, know what to look for."

Said Kimsey: "I've never seen a dogface butterfly in nature, and I've been collecting throughout the state for 40 years - although this may be because I'm always looking for insects on the ground."

As for the male dogface butterfly that appears on the poster, Kareofelas collected it in June 1999 along Bear Creek in Colusa County. "It was flying by very fast," he said. "I have seen it many other places, always as singletons, and never really expected. Always flying. Fast."

More information on the California dogface butterfly is on Shapiro's Web site at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/butterfly/Zerene/eurydice.

The California dogface butterfly poster is available for $18 laminated or $15 non-laminated at the Bohart Museum, 1124 Academic Surge, UC Davis, bmuseum@ucdavis.edu, (530) 752-0493. It may be ordered online at http://bohart.ucdavis.edu/ or on Fran Keller's Web site at http://www.tenebrionid.net/. All proceeds benefit the Bohart Museum outreach program.

The Bohart Museum, dedicated to teaching, research and service, houses the seventh largest insect collection in North Americas. The global collection of some seven million insects focuses on terrestrial and fresh water invertebrates.

The museum is the home of the California Insect Survey, showcasing the insect biodiversity of the state's deserts, mountains, coast and central valley.

(For photos of the insect and the scientists, see http://www.ucmrp.ucdavis.edu/news/dogfacebutterfly.html)