Painted Lady Butterflies to Be Released in Courtyard

Students and staff enjoying the June weather in the school’s outdoor courtyard will be joined today by something else wearing the school’s colors. Ms. Halliwell’s AP Environmental Science class will release about forty butterflies during periods one and six.

Since the school’s introduction of AP Environmental Science last year, students have conducted labs in order to study various fauna. In Room 139 of the school, there are tanks full of crustaceans and live plants. There are also butterfly cages housing actual butterflies. When these Cynthia butterflies, also known as painted ladies, were caterpillars, they were the focus of a lab Ms. Halliwell, a science teacher at the school, assigned.

The goal of the lab is for the students to decipher “how good [the caterpillars] are at turning their food into body mass,” said Halliwell. The lab, which Halliwell titled Primary Consumer Energy, is only concerned with the change from caterpillar to pupa. Once the insects come out of their chrysalis, or quiescent pupa stage, they are transferred to the mesh and plastic butterfly cages, where they are kept in the classroom until they are released.

The painted ladies will be set free by Halliwell and her students today in the outdoor courtyard of the school. Halliwell hopes that a “population will develop over time,” since she plans to release the butterflies in the same place each year.

Students and staff enjoying the courtyard during these last weeks of school have a good chance of seeing the butterflies. “There’s something very poetic about that,” said Mr. DiGregorio, the Supervisor of Library Media Services.