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Despite the high stakes, the tiny caterpillar in the Albuquerque lab was not given a name.
It’s the last known individual of its kind, the critically endangered Sacramento Mountains checkerspot. If the caterpillar survives, it will transform into a butterfly with wings of stenciled orange, black and cream. Scientists hope to breed it by finding and capturing another from the wild, if any are left.
But last summer, as researchers prepared for weeks of searching for the subspecies in the only place on earth it might be found, the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, they knew that their chances of finding any were low. Despite annual surveys, it hadn’t been seen in the wild since 2022. Climate change and too much grazing have wreaked havoc on the plants that the insects need for food.
Back in 2022, four butterflies were found and collected. They bred and produced more than 160 caterpillars, but almost all died before becoming butterflies. Among the few that did transform, there was never a male-female pair alive at the same time. All died without the opportunity to breed.
By this spring, only one caterpillar was left, still in larval form three years later.
“It’s really best not to name things in this situation,” said Quin Baine, the invertebrate species survival specialist at the New Mexico BioPark Society, which supports the zoo and botanic gardens where the caterpillar is housed. “There is a level of detachment that you have to keep.”
Much would need to break in their favor to prevent the butterfly from going extinct. Still, Dr. Baine and the team of scientists and volunteers working with her couldn’t help but hope that their last-ditch conservation efforts would work.
