“Even lichen as a primary food source is rare,” I pointed out. “Caterpillars and moths can live on lichen, and there is one type of butterfly in Sri Lanka I’m aware of which prefers it. And to be honest, this butterfly shares some behavioural characteristics of the moth. But the lichen food source is an odd symbiotic relationship. Lichens accumulate large concentrations of secondary metabolites, like aromatic phenolic compounds, such as atranorin and usnic acid.” I glanced over at Jack. “It must deter the bats from eating them.” I shook my head in wonder. “How remarkable.”
“Can I ask a really obvious question?” Amy asked. “You’ll probably think I’m stupid.”
“No I won’t,” I replied. No question in the quest for education was stupid.
She made a face. “What’s the difference between a moth and butterfly? I mean, except the fact that moths are usually brown and butterflies are all kinds of colours. And that we see butterflies during the day but see moths at night.”
I smiled. “You almost answered your own question. There is a colour differential. Butterflies typically have more colouring. Butterflies are diurnal, moths are nocturnal. But there are other differences. The way they fold their wings in a resting position is probably the most obvious, but also the antennae are different and the frenulum.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry, the what?”
Jack laughed. “Not that kind. This is a different kind. In insects.”
I caught on to what she meant. “Oh.” Dear God, I hoped she couldn’t see the flame of my cheeks. “Heavens no. Uh, moths have a wing-coupling for flight that butterflies do not have. Also, the butterfly pupa is made from hardened protein; the moth pupa is spun from silk. The casings here in this cave are not silk.”
I held up the dead specimen in my jar, inspecting it as best I could with the poor light. “But these eyes are . . .”
Jack walked over to me. “They’re what?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, not really believing it myself. “I want to get a better look in my lab, but I might have a theory.”
“You noticed something,” he prompted.
“I can’t say with any certainty yet, and I may be jumping to conclusions.”
“What is it?”
“Ask me how I know this species has never been documented before.”
“Christ, Lawson, just say it.”
I smiled at him. “This species is almost certainly a butterfly. The thorax, the scaling, the wings, antennae are all butterfly. But the eyes . . .”
“The eyes are what?”
“This species has superposition eyes. Butterflies do not have superposition eyes, they have apposition eyes. Moths have superposition eyes because they’re nocturnal; the eye reflects light differently.”
Jack’s brow quirked upward. “And you’ve never heard of a butterfly with the eyes of a moth.”
I grinned. “Never.”
“So is this a new species of butterfly?” Amy asked. “Or a whole new species?”
I chewed on my lip and looked again to the specimen in my jar, trying not to smile. “I can’t say with certainty.”
“Holy shit,” Jack said. “It is. It’s a whole new specimen. Because if you’ve never heard of it, it doesn’t exist.”
“Well, it may have existed a long time ago,” I interjected, trying not to sound too hopeful. “Perhaps it was lost a few hundred years ago and we’ve only just rediscovered it. I’ll need to do a lot of research. And there is much we don’t know. Do they spend their entire lifecycles inside this cave? Do they see daylight at all? What is their lifecycle? Have they simply evolved over thousands of years to adapt to the dark? Many troglofaunal species do this.”
“Troglofaunal?” Amy repeated.
“Cave-dwelling animals.”
“Well,” Jack said regardless of my information dump. “It’s exciting nonetheless.”
“It is,” I agreed. “I think we can leave them be for the time being. I don’t want the light to upset them any more than we need to. Let’s pack up and go out to the others.”
I had no idea what the time was, given the inside of the cave was impervious to day or night.
“Though I would like to try one thing,” I added after we’d packed up our gear and were just about to walk out. I took one live specimen, held it very carefully, and we made our way back out through the chambers toward the daylight.
Then, standing in the middle of the first chamber, with daylight still streaming in, I opened the jar. The butterfly crawled up out of the plastic specimen container, tasting the air with its proboscis. I wanted to see if it was drawn to the daylight, but it took off, flittering through the air toward the back of the cave, through the fissure, and disappeared back into the darkness.
All I could do was shake my head. “Remarkable.”
Chapter Five
Jack
This was ground-breaking stuff. And I’d seen Lawson discover new butterflies before. I’d seen his face, his smile, the light of wonder in his eyes.
But this wasn’t just a new butterfly.
This was a new species. A butterfly-moth cross. A sub-species? A new lepidopteran classification? A new species entirely?
And to see Lawson discover this, to be part of the team that discovered this, was an extraordinary thing.
He got the same look in his eyes when he watched Brennan. When Brennan took his first step, said “daddy” for the first time.
That was the look Lawson got when he realised he was seeing something utterly wondrous.
It did things to my heart I wasn’t quite prepared for.
“Pretty special, huh?” Amy asked me quietly. We were taking soil samples from the second chamber, and Lawson was spending time with the butterflies, recording their behaviour patterns.
I realised I was smiling at Amy like a crazy man. “It’s pretty special, yeah.”
“You’re very lucky,” she whispered, “to get to work with your husband.”
There was something wistful, or wishful, about how she said that. I tried to piece it together. I nodded toward the first chamber. “Do you . . . are you and Vince or Connor . . . ?”
She looked aghast. “Oh, no!”
“Oh, sorry. I just wondered if you meant . . . you’ve mentioned relationship goals a few times, and I thought . . .”
She chewed on the inside of her lip for a second. “My partner,” she whispered. “Works for a Tassie Devil conservation group. To work with her every day would be . . . amazing.”
To work with her . . .
Oh.
She’d just divulged something incredibly personal to me, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She swallowed hard. “It’s just that I see you and your husband doing this . . .”
I reached over and gave Amy’s arm a squeeze. “Don’t let anyone tell you no or that you can’t.”
She nodded quickly, relieved and a little emotional. “One day we might get to make it happen.”
I finished writing on the label of a sample of bat droppings. “You know, it takes a special kind of tenacity to make it happen. And that guy in there,” I said, pointing my pen toward the third chamber where Lawson was. “He’s the brave one out of us two. He never gives up, and years ago, he told his boss at the university how it was going to happen and how he was in charge and how he would be moving to Tasmania to pursue the butterfly he found. His thesis was also basically an open letter to the butterfly association to tell them they were a bunch of idiots.” I chuckled at that. “Which was before I even knew him. But he was right. Add in the fact that he’s a genius, it’s kinda hard to argue with anything he says because he’s right almost all of the time. But he’s stubborn and he knows what he wants, and he wanted to involve me with his work, and it’s been incredible. Not just to be part of it and to experience it myself, but to see him experience it.”