A team organized by the Oklahoma Biological Survey tracked down the handful of frosted elfin butterfly records for the state and made it their mission to increase the number of known locations for the species.

The target may have been small – frosted elfins have a wingspan of just over an inch – but their efforts paid off in a big way. Prior to 2018, there were only nine Oklahoma records for the butterfly. After years of extensive surveys across the southeastern corner of the state, there are now 188 records from 52 sites in nine Oklahoma counties.

Funding for this project is from the Cooperative Endangered Species Fund and ODWC, with matching resources from the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory.