TRENTO, Italy — In a lush greenhouse high in the Alps, butterflies of various species and colors flutter freely while butterfly pupae are suspended in a structure as they grow into adult insects. This is the Butterfly Forest in the tropical mountain greenhouse in Trento, Italy, a project by the Museo delle Scienze, or MUSE, an Italian science museum. It's modeled on Udzungwa Mountains, a mountain range and rainforest area in south-central Tanzania that's one of the world's biodiversity hot spots.
The Butterfly Forest features plant species endemic to the region, as well as birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates from different parts of the world, all inside about 6,400 square feet of forest with cliffs, inclinations and a waterfall. The Butterfly Forest was created this spring to create public awareness on some of the research MUSE is doing in Udzungwa Mountains to study and protect the world's biodiversity against threats such as deforestation and climate change. Ornithologist Francesca Rossi shows a female Papilio lowi chrysalis May 6 at a butterfly nursery rack at the greenhouse of the Museo delle Scienze, or MUSE, a science museum in Trento, Italy.
Deforestation leads to habitat loss, which causes declines in nectar sources for butterflies, changing the functioning of the ecosystem. It can also limit the movements of the insects, causing a decline in biodiversity and potential extinction of vulnerable butterfly species. Changes to soil and air temperatures a.