The significance they hold for me is sadness since I heard they're endangered.
Butterflies and other tiny plant-reliant animals that are endangered in the US are ones whose host plants are disappearing (host plants is where they lay their eggs). Some of them aren't actually native to the US, though they may have been here for a century or more. They came over as larva on plants that were shipped in, or brought in by tourists and folks coming back from vacation.
The reason you get searched for plants, food, and flowers when you cross the border and at airports is to avoid bringing home an invasive or displaced species of insect or spider and whatever.
But anyway, it's true a lot of the US's endangered butterflies (there's about a dozen) are mostly losing their host plant to construction and things like water management, like when we build a dam or redirect a river. Also from natural events, like a small lake, wetland, or river drying up, or an earthquake, landslide, avalanche, wildfire or tornado wipes out some self-contained ecosystem, but it's mostly caused by people; growing cities and all that.
For the life of me, I can't remember where I was going with this.
I learned about all that it in a science class at city college....but I'm sure that wasn't my point. So I'll just close with "There's my babble about endangered butterflies. And I hope you're having a nice morning, Rip."
