Native Plant Society of New Mexico Native Plant Society of New Mexico

“Native Flora, Native Fauna: Using Host Plant Data to Guide Conservation Decisions”

Speaker: Simon Doneski, Graduate Researcher University of New Mexico

This presentation focuses on new host plant research that is reshaping how we approach butterfly conservation in New Mexico and beyond. I will introduce a comprehensive North American butterfly host plant database that we created. As well as a new native plant restoration tool we are hoping to launch across the United States designed to help guide native plant selection for backyard gardens and habitat restoration. We will also discuss some of the new insights that these powerful new tools can give us and discuss how they change the way we think about butterfly host plant usage and co-evolution as well as a new way to predict novel host interactions. I will also provide a brief overview of the status of New Mexico butterflies and the work being done to save them and their host plants.

I am a graduate researcher at the University of New Mexico where my research focuses on combatting pollinator declines through the use of native host plants and emerging technologies. I have also worked on many New Mexico butterfly conservation projects under the tutelage of Steve Cary and with help from conservationists across the state. Before coming to New Mexico, I spent nearly a decade at New Hampshire Fish and Game exploring different techniques of habitat restoration to improve the conditions of rare butterflies and their rare host plants. I am particularly interested in conservation, co-extinction, and building technological tools to empower local conservationists. A key example of this is through the New Mexico Rare Arthropods Resource (nmrare.org) a website we built over the last two years based on the New Mexico Rare Plants website that makes conservation information on arthropods in New Mexico more accessible than ever before.