IBMN Winter Gathering 2026

Recorded on March 14, 2026, including the keynote address: The State of the Butterflies: What do four decades of data tell us about butterfly populations in Illinois and beyond? The 2026 IBMN Winter Gathering keynote was delivered by Doug Taron, Director of IBMN and Chief Curator Emeritus at Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. As the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network enters its fortieth season, the number of publications that incorporate our data is increasing rapidly. The first peer-reviewed journal article that included IBMN data was not published until 2012, 25 years after the founding of the network. Since then, dozens of published papers have incorporated our data. Today we will discuss four analyses that use IBMN data to document: 1. Overall declines of butterfly abundance in North America, including declines observed in protected areas 2. The predominant role of insecticides in these declines 3. The role that land management can play in mitigating butterfly decline A recurring theme in these and other papers is that single data sets, such as those generated by the IBMN, are much more powerful tools for analysis when used in conjunction with other data sets. Learn more about the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network: https://naturemuseum.org/cas/communit...