ABOUT

About this project

The Mason Farm Butterfly Project is a citizen science project to monitor butterflies at Mason Farm Biological Reserve, a nature preserve managed by the NC Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. The project is a partnership between Joel Kingsolver’s lab in the UNC Chapel Hill Biology Department and the NC Botanical Garden. We invite participants to record butterfly observations at Mason Farm and contribute their sightings to our database, which will be used by members of the Kingsolver lab to study changes in butterfly flight seasons over time. To learn how you can join our efforts by collecting your own observations of butterflies at Mason Farm, please visit our Get Involved page.

Why butterflies?

Butterflies are useful indicators of environmental change. By examining changes in butterfly diversity and abundance, researchers have used butterflies to study the effects of climate change, habitat loss, and other global changes to our environment.