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| Xerces Blue Extinct (1943) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Glaucopsyche xerces ( BoisduvalJean Baptiste Alphonse Dechauffour de Boisduval ( June 17, 1799 December 30, 1879) was a French lepidopterist and physician. He developed the Boisduval scale and identified many new species of butterflies. Boisduval Boisduval Entomologists., 1852Events January 14 President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic. January 17 United Kingdom recognizes independence of the Transvaal Devil's Island penal colony opens February 11 First British public toilet) |
The Xerces Blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces) is an extinct species of butterfly. The species lived in coastal sand dunes of the San Francisco Bay area. The Xerces butterfly is the first American butterfly species to become extinct as a result of loss of habitat caused by urban development. The last Xerces Blue was seen in March, 1943 in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The species was first described and documented in 1852. It was characterized by blue wings with white spots. The butterfly's food plants belonged to the genera Lotus and Lupinus. Xerces probably associated with ants in its larval stages as part of a symbiotic relationship. One of the theories regarding the extinction of the species is that with human settlement in the Bay area, new species of ant were introduced which slowly replaced the existing ant species within the butterfly's habitat.
Efforts are on to resurrect the Xerces Blue. The Palos Verdes BluePalos Verdes blue butterfly Scientific Classification : Animalia : Arthropoda : Insecta : Lepidoptera : Ditrysia : Rhopalocera : Papilionoidea : Lycaenidae : Polyommatinae : Polyommatini Glaucopsyche Lygdamus Palosverdesensis Trinomial name Glaucopsyche l (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis) which is considered a Los Angeles cousin of the Xerces, is being reared in labs. A new Xerces-like subspecies of the Silvery Blue (Glaucopsyche lygdamus) have been discovered as well.
An endangered insects conservation group known as the Xerces SocietyThe Xerces Society is an environmental organization that focuses on invertebrates which are essential to biological diversity. The name is in honor of the extinct California butterfly, Xerces Blue. The Xerces Society is an international non-profit organiz is named after the Xerces Blue species.
XercesXerces is a family of software packages for parsing and manipulating XML, part of the Apache XML project. Xerces (named after the Xerces Blue butterfly) provides world-class XML parsing and generation. In particular the Java XML version was one of the ori is also a group of XML software packages named after this butterfly.