The butterfly effect: How science learning has taken wings in India

Citizen science is research driven by the participation of students, amateur scientists, and the general public. It involves the collection of data and sharing it with professional scientists. Among the different citizen science projects is Butterflies of India that has garnered a huge interest among urban and rural citizens alike. It has led to thousands of people learning science at a later age.

What starts as a fascination for butterflies soon blossoms into deep science learning. Rajat Joshi says: “My interest in the world of butterflies began with a college assignment. The assignment was to click photos of five butterfly species from the college campus and write a report on them. While everyone others used internet photos, I tried capturing photos of a butterfly that was flying in front of me in the campus. This was my first introduction to the butterfly world.”

What makes butterflies addictive is often their extraordinary diversity. While most people are too busy to notice the winged creatures, once they start to notice, they can’t but fail to notice that even in a small area with a few trees and plants, there are many different types of butterflies — sizes, shapes and colours.

The participants on nature walks during surveys get a firsthand opportunity to have closer and focused observations. with us, which otherwise they will miss. Once their curiosity is piqued, the experts on the survey who answer their questions trigger the learning curve. For instance, they may observe a bird-catching butterfly or a wasp laying an egg on caterpillars and learn of the food cycle and the food web. Then they relate the changing habitat types, temperature and weather conditions to the butterfly behaviour.

Savita Bharti, a nature enthusiast from Pune who has a masters degree in Environmental Sciences, says: “In 2015 I purchased a DSLR camera for a course. While learning the know how of a camera a butterfly settled on nearby vegetation, slightly opening up the wing. The white and red combination caught my eye, I got one record shot of it. After that day there was no looking back on butterflies. Seniors from the field always helped with queries and their positive responses were always very much encouraging to get deeper into the world of winged beauties.”

A citizens’ repository

Ms. Bharti now coordinates the Indian Butterfly Monitoring Scheme’s (iBMS) activities in Pune. iBMS was launched in 2021 by naturalists, educators and conservationists to understand how butterfly population dynamics change amid the climate crisis and habitat changes. The project that runs in different partis of India is part of a larger project – the Butterflies of India – the first citizen science platform for butterflies in India.

Since its inception in 2009, the website has seen a growing number of contributors. The project mainly aims to document the diversity of butterflies and share information with enthusiastic learners, researchers and policy makers. Thanks to the careful observation and documentation by citizen scientists, more than 15 butterfly species not recorded previously in India were documented.

Experts and professionals meticulously review the photographs to mainly identify the butterflies, including the stage of their life cycle. As of today, the website has 8,311 citizen scientists from 5 to 70-year-olds contributing through their photographs — notably, an enthusiastic number of people from North-eastern India. 

Around the time when Butterflies of India was established, some enthusiasts were observing butterflies in Bengaluru and started the Bangalore Butterfly Club (BBC) in 2012. Ashok Sengupta, a post-graduate teacher in computer sciences at the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Bangalore is one of the founders of the BBC. He mentions how a website-designing competition and his own interest in butterflies inspired many students to participate in observing butterflies and recording the information digitally, particularly when social media was not so popular. 

“It was very difficult to learn initially, there was no social media, and I had to rely upon Yahoo groups and some information from books and articles. My students were curious to know what I was doing. They joined me for a website-designing competition. We worked on a project on a website involving butterflies in the campus.” Today, Mr. Sengupta has planted several trees for butterflies to visit and actively teaches students about the life-cycles of butterflies, larval host plants–plants on which larvae of butterflies feed and grow, and techniques for approaching a butterfly, and taking an appropriate photo. Some of his students have taken up biodiversity as a subject for higher education. 

The Bangalore Butterfly Club announces a walk every two weeks, where citizen scientists, including children, make detailed observations of butterflies, larval-host plants, stages of life cycles, etc. “It’s more of a peer-learning experience. You may not get a lot of information in books, but from the field where experts can guide you to learn quickly”, comments Mr. Sengupta. The BBC has documented around 180 species of butterflies just from Bengaluru.

With such a large group of nature enthusiasts, challenges exist. Misidentification is one of the challenges that the experts face. Dr. Krushnamegh Kunte, Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, explains, “Butterflies such as bushbrowns or darts are very difficult to identify. Often you have to look at these butterflies closely. You have to look at specific parts of the butterflies. Looking at those is really important and those often cannot be seen from images. You have to catch the butterflies or specifically look for them in some cases and then you can identify them. So those butterflies never really correctly get identified.”

Another major challenge has been getting more people interested, specifically in learning about the biology of butterflies. Dr. Kunte is concerned that several enthusiasts upload butterfly photographs on social media, only to get views and likes. Many other citizen science project websites also work on similar lines, where one can upload many images at a time, and get instant feedback in the form of views, tags, etc.

The Butterflies of India website works differently from other global citizen science project websites. On Butterflies of India, when a butterfly photograph is uploaded by a citizen scientist, the experts review the image, and only after a careful review, the images are published on the website. This drastically reduces the rate of misidentifications compared to those in other citizen science projects. However, this peer-review process is longer, and may take days or even months before a submitted photograph is published. 

Social media has been a source of support too. Mr. Joshi is an iBMS co-ordinator for an observation site in Pune and the district co-ordinator of the Big Butterfly Month held every year in September. He says: “I made it a point to talk about butterflies and spread awareness through social media and media channels to create noise about these events, and that’s how I got people interested in it. It is very good to see that the awareness is increasing among the people of Pune, and they are excited about future events,” remarked Joshi.

He also mentions that among the people who come for the observations, young children are particularly enthusiastic. He recalls, “Two brothers, about 8 to 10 years, were interested in writing the count of butterflies. I kept a watch on them, and they recorded everything accurately. I had missed one species in my recording, but they hadn’t. Their enthusiasm was contagious”.

Citizen science projects require more than mere observation. It is about learning to record information systematically and correctly, rather than merely taking photographs. Viraj Nawge, a doctoral student of Dr. Kunte at the NCBS explains that in India, a standard time-constrained count method is followed for recording data on butterflies. He explains, “We count the number of butterflies for a span of 30 minutes which is considered as one slot or one count. On each day, there are six half-an-hour counts”.

Unlike the standard method with observations at regular intervals, there is also an ‘opportunistic method’ where observations are recorded right when a butterfly is sighted. All the data is collected under the Indian Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (iBMS). Mr. Nawge further adds that Bengaluru has seen the longest-running biweekly monitoring of butterflies. “Currently, the 14th year is going on. In a year, there are 24 counts. If there is a bunch of people counting butterflies, there will be experts and amateurs among them.” He further explains that peer-learning during the walks encourages stronger participation, each time a count is organised.

Taking butterflies to rural schools

Citizen science projects on butterflies are running with equal enthusiasm in the rural areas, albeit in a different way. In Dhebewadi, a village in the Satara district of Maharashtra, Dr. Sudhir Kumbhar, a retired teacher and an active science communicator has been co-ordinating a citizen science project for 24 years. In the two schools where he has taught, students actively participate in a citizen science project on butterflies.

Students here learned about butterfly identification and their life-cycles. Dr. Kumbhar also facilitated the establishment of larval-host plant nurseries and teaches students about the plants. He is proud of the fact that students apply and test their knowledge for conservation of butterflies. “We have recently seen the Oak leaf butterfly and the Danaid eggfly, which were not seen previously. These might have come after students learned about larval host plants of these species and planted them”, remarks Dr. Kumbhar. 

The project has sparked interest among students from rural and semi-urban areas of Satara. Students take photographs of butterflies and publish them as posters under their project Nisargadnyaan (Knowledge of the nature). Most students are between 10-18 years of age and those who have now completed their education create awareness about butterfly conservation by educating people in their localities. 

Dr. Kumbhar has also tried alleviating the fear of caterpillars, which is common among children. He teaches them about the role of butterfly predators – chameleons, frogs, etc., encouraging them to observe a butterfly within its habitat. He further adds, “There would be incidents of kids catching butterflies and tying ropes to them, which was a popular mischief among kids. That has reduced a lot ever since kids have learned about the importance of these pollinators in our ecosystem.” Dr. Kumbhar also expressed his concerns about the effect of forest fires on butterflies. and teaches students about managing the fires, to save the butterflies among all other species. 

Citizen scientists, experts, and amateurs believe that a collective, informed and sustained effort is required save the pollinators. Experts emphasize the larger goal of citizen science projects to add to the knowledge on habitats and also educate participants on interrelationships of species, through seasonal changes. Ms. Bharti says, “A larger objective of these projects is to understand the habitat challenges and promote conservation through our observations and learning.” 

Being a teacher, Mr. Sengupta highly recommends adding citizen science to schools’ formal education. “It should be part of the curriculum so that children go to nature and learn from the field. This is not a part of any curriculum in India. When children start learning about nature, they will be more curious and responsible. They will not learn virtually or by looking at photographs”, Mr. Sengupta adds. 

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