Nabokov's Butterfly Theories Confirmed

[Steerpike]

I always find it interesting to look at great writer and find out what else they did in life, besides write. Nabokov was a brilliant fiction writer, but as noted in the article, he was also curator of the Lepidoptera section at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (Lepidoptera, by the way, is the insect order that includes butterflies).

Around 65 years ago, Nabokov released a paper relating to the evolutionary migrations of the Polyommatus blue butterflies. Based on this article, those theories were shown to be correct back in 2011. Pretty cool.

Nabokov

 

[Sparkie]

Interesting. I see how gene testing can confirm some of this, but at first glance I wonder how it can be proved that the migrations occurred over five waves. Not saying I doubt it, just wondering how it can be proven. (I'm no scientist, y'know.) I'll have to look into it.

 

[Steerpike]

It's the genetics, again. You can look at the genetic profile of the insects and see how many waves of migration were likely to have occurred based on how the genes appear in the population.

 

[Jamber]

I didn't know any of that, but how cool.