Rearing the Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae) in Controlled Conditions: A Case Study with Heavy Metal Tolerance

In this study, we’re interested in understanding how organisms deal with anthropogenic environments like cities, roadsides, and crop fields. We use cabbage white butterflies as a system because they’re easy to manipulate experimentally. For instance, we’re studying genetic variation intolerance to urban pollutants.

We collect samples from different locations and populations to study variation over species or space. Nets, coolers, and envelopes are our main tools in the field. Butterfly traits are measured by microscopy and ICP-MS is the best method to measure heavy metal concentrations in small samples.

One of the current experimental challenges is studying the variation across species and their developmental adjustments to human environments. The main difficulty lies in rearing diverse species under controlled experimental conditions. While cabbage white butterflies are easy to raise, finding suitable analogous diets for 10 or 20 different species that feed on various plants presents a significant challenge from an experimental perspective.

We’re interested in mitigating exposure to urban toxins, the ecological interventions that could decrease the toxicity of heavy metals and other urban pollutants, such as microplastics, are being explored. Additionally, we aim to investigate how to design pockets of habitat within city spaces to encourage the health of plants and animals living there, including humans.