The Steinhardt Natural History Museum and the Israel Center for Citizen Science closely accompany one of the oldest and leading initiatives of citizen science in Israel – the National Butterfly Monitoring Program in Israel. On Friday, September 20, 2024, the participants of the program met for the traditional annual meeting of the Butterfly Enthusiasts Association for the 41st time and hosted In the Faculty of Architecture at the Technion, beyond the pleasant social gathering, the annual conference is an opportunity to keep up to date with research results and innovations in the monitoring program.

Among all the lectures, the butterfly monitors heard from Dobi Binyamini, the chairman of the association, about hidden butterfly species in Israel . In addition, Dobi brought up the importance of monitoring in areas damaged by fires, which unfortunately have occurred frequently in the past year, and asked the monitors to respond to the initiative of adopting a burned monitoring trail at the same time as an unburned area (for comparison), to check the recovery of vegetation and butterflies for at least 5-6 years. Prof. Assaf Schwartz lectured on the relationship between butterflies, affinity with nature, quality of life and nature conservation, and a discussion was held with many participants about new species in Israel such as the cycad, the pelargonium And the lemon swallowtail – are they welcome guests or infiltrators?

Leah Binyamini presented a data summary of five years of the Great Butterfly Count and Ahied Sade presented the understandings that can be derived from these five years of data collection. Dr. Tomer Goite, director of the Israel Center for Civic Science, presented the new center and BioCollect – a system for collecting and presenting data that is being built at the center, which will be used in the future by the monitors for reporting instead of the existing applications. Dr. Or Komai presented the results of the butterflies from the State of Nature Report 2023 and Zohar Afek presented the findings of her thesis research on the trends of the threatened species Tzamirir the Kidd and their copper the Galili ants.

After the lunch break, Gilad Weil from the Nature and Parks Authority presented innovations in the distribution limit of butterfly species in the desert book, Dr. Tzvika Avni presented the association’s tours that take place every year throughout the country – successes and insights for the future, Dr. Racheli Schwartz Tzhor gave a taste of the Danait Dora from a lecture Broader on chemical communication in the relationships of butterflies, plants and other partners, and finally the monitoring program was examined in relation to climate change and in the context of the challenging times in the Israeli reality.

The conference was an interesting and fruitful variety and a wonderful expression of a central principle in citizen science – returning the information to the participants. Sharing the results and findings with the mentors is an important part of the citizen science process, and it enables the understanding of the meaning of the efforts made throughout the year and their contribution to important scientific discoveries.

Photograph of the subject image: Yael Orgad, iNaturalist