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She was thought to have disappeared from Florence and the surrounding area. But no. We are talking about Zerynthia cassandra, a beautiful butterfly protected at European level and no longer reported for decades in the Florentine areas. It was spotted in the Mugnone River Park between Florence and Fiesole by an employee of Baker Hughes which operates in Italy through Nuovo Pignone and who, together with other company workers and as part of the URBeauty project, was on an excursion with Florentine students of the natural sciences degree course at the University of Florence.
“URBeauty intends to identify which elements of biodiversity have been lost in the urban and peri-urban area of Florence – explains Leonardo Daiuto, researcher in Zoology and project manager – Referring to the collections preserved in the La Specola Natural History Museum – he continues – we operate a comparison between the butterflies present in Florence one hundred years ago with those we find in our citizen science activities, involving the citizens themselves ‘in the field’ in identifying the specimens. We were very surprised by the presence of Zerynthia cassandra, despite the important changes brought about by city urbanization and interventions on river banks.”
Having seen this butterfly again in the Florentine area could have decidedly positive implications.
“The presence of this insect – underlines Daiuto – could mean a deterioration of the ecosystem in the last century that is less significant than what we had predicted at the beginning of the project. Now we can study the specificities of the habitat in which this moth lives and take action to protect it. Each lepidopteran plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity, unlike what happens for many vertebrates, especially mammals, adequate insect protection projects have not yet been set up”.
