Learning from Lepidoptera

摘要

What have overpopulation and butterfly research got in common? According to Paul Ehrlich's introductory chapter in Butterflies: Ecology and Evolution Taking Flight, butterfly researchers can help save the world from being overrun by mankind. Ehrlich (a cofounder of Zero Population Growth, now renamed Population Connection) believes lepidopterists have a responsibility to educate the public about human impacts because of the great appeal and popularity of butterflies. He has a point; butterflies capture the public imagination and are frequently used as metaphors to illustrate disparate phenomena: the butterfly effect in chaos theory, the Lorenz butterfly in nonlinear dynamics, and even "butterfly economics"―a new general social and economic theory.