{"id":696621,"date":"2021-07-20T19:00:01","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T23:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=696621"},"modified":"2021-07-20T19:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T23:00:01","slug":"dna-from-93-year-old-butterfly-confirms-the-first-us-case-of-human-led-insect-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=696621","title":{"rendered":"DNA from 93-year-old butterfly confirms the first US case of human-led insect extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Xerces blue butterfly was last seen flapping its iridescent periwinkle wings in San Francisco in the early 1940s. It&#8217;s generally accepted to be extinct, the first American insect species destroyed by urban development, but there are lingering questions about whether it was really a species to begin with, or just a sub-population of another common butterfly. In a new study in Biology Letters, researchers analyzed the DNA of a 93-year-old Xerces blue specimen in museum collections, and they found that its DNA is unique enough to merit being considered a species. The study confirms that yes, the Xerces blue really did go extinct, and that insect conservation is something we have to take seriously.&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n Click here for original story, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2021-07-dna-year-old-butterfly-case-human-led.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">DNA from 93-year-old butterfly confirms the first US case of human-led insect extinction<\/a>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Phys.org&#013;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Xerces blue butterfly was last seen flapping its iridescent periwinkle wings in San Francisco in the early 1940s. It&#8217;s generally accepted to be extinct, the first American insect species&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phys-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=696621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=696621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=696621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=696621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}