Sandy Klein: "The
Effort to Keep Biodiversity Out of Crisis-Environmental Dedication Drives
Research of Biologist Edd Barrows." Complete article at following
URL: http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=41474
“I have a life-long interest in biodiversity, in
everything around us related to life.” [ ... ] In Wisconsin, Barrows’ lab
is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Air National Guard to
learn how to use adaptive management for the federally endangered Karner Blue
Butterfly [...] A small butterfly with beautifully patterned blue wings, the
Karner Blue has a rich biological and cultural history. It was named Lycaeides
melissa samuelis by the renowned Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who was an
amateur lepidopterist..."
JM: Why did Nabokov
choose to name it "samuelis"? Any link with Samuel Johnson or little
paradises?
A google-related item, from long ago ( Chasing Nabokov's
Elusive and Endangered True Love - by MARGARET MITTELBACH and MICHAEL
CREWDSON, published: Friday, July 14, 2000)
"He crouched all the way down to
lupine level to get a close-up view. When the K.B. fluttered off, there was a
tiny white spot, smaller than a poppy seed, where she had been.
''Look at that!'' he said. ''I've been coming
here for 30 years, and I've never seen that before. In fact, I don't think
anyone's ever seen that.''
Nabokov's little samuelis had laid an
egg. Nabokov's 'Little Paradise'
[...] When Nabokov wrote his 1957 novel
''Pnin,'' he couldn't resist working in a detailed description of the butterfly
he had named [...] Mr. Rittner told us that in the 1970's he and his friends had
written Nabokov a letter, hoping to get his support for preserving the Pine Bush
from development. Although Nabokov did not join the fight to save the butterfly,
he wrote back that he remembered the Pine Bush as a ''sandy and flowery little
paradise.''