The Light of Nabokov’s Life

Butterflies were his other passion and a new paper tells us how accurate some of his theories on dispersal were

Transcontinental dispersals by organisms usually represent improbable events that constitute a major challenge for biogeographers. By integrating molecular phylogeny, historical biogeography and palaeoecology, we test a bold hypothesis proposed by Vladimir Nabokov regarding the origin of Neotropical Polyommatus blue butterflies, and show that Beringia(the land bridge that once existed between Asia and North America) has served as a biological corridor for the dispersal of these insects from Asia into the New World. So begins the abstract of a paper published in Proceeding of the Royal Society B(iology), as it brings back into focus the scientific work of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Nabokov’s work on butterflies was no mere hobby, and the hours he devoted to telling one type of butterfly from another (the method he preferred involved long hours peering through the microscope at their genitalia) permanently damaged his eyesight. But who better to recount this mix of passion and rigour than Nabokov himself? In 2000, The Atlantic published Father’s Butterflies 23 years after his death. He wrote: ‘I personally belonged to the category of curieux who, in order to acquaint themselves properly with a butterfly and to visualize it, require three things; its artistic depiction, a compendium of all that has been written about it, and its insertion within the general system of classification… Only one thing could wholly replace these three demands: if I had caught it myself, if the expression of the given specimen’s wings corresponded to the individual particulars of a familiar habitat (with its smells, hues, and sounds) where I would have lived through all that impassioned, insane joy of the hunt, when as I climb the rock, my face contorted, gasping, shouting voluptuously senseless words, I do not notice thorn or precipice, and see neither the viper under my feet nor the shepherd, yonder, observing with the irritation of ignorance the spasms of the madman with his green net as he approaches his heretofore undescribed prey.’

Nabokovtheoriestranscontinental dispersal