"The search for rare butterflies in the high mountains is not really a science, nor does it require too much technical mountaineering skill, and although it has many elements of both, it is mostly a path of extreme patience, more akin to the metaphysical aspects of meditation, than to anything else”. --John Hessler, “Searching for the Rarest Butterflies in the Alps”, 2024.

Biography

When not climbing in the Alps, looking for rare plants in the desert, or searching for endangered butterflies in a remote valley in the Pyrenees, I am a computational biogeographer and Lepidopterist, living in Nice, France.

I am the creator and director of LEP-LAB AI, where we use machine learning, combined with advanced GIS and genomic data, to study the biogeography, migration patterns and complex foraging habits of alpine butterflies.

Our current projects center on studying the acoustic signals associated with Maculinea-Myrmica butterfly-ant interactions and mimicry and on using the theory of stochastic Levy flights and superdiffusive processes, to simulate and help map the movement patterns of high-mountain species, like those in the genus Erebia.

Our field oriented biogeographic research centers on mapping the intricate spatial distribution patterns of rare forms of high-altitude butterflies in the Pyrenees, and in the remote valleys of the parc national du Mercantour and the parc national des Écrins.

The author of more than one hundred articles, books, and reviews, including the New York Times bestseller, MAP: Exploring the World, my most recent papers are, To save lives: Lessons of a pandemic cartographer, published in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2024), and Mapping the Last Pool of Darkness: a Tribute to Cartographer Tim Robinson (1935-2020), which appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of The Portolan.

A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society(FRGS), I find wandering the high alpine mountains of France, wondering about the mysterious history of Colias ponteni, and marveling at the complexity and beauty to be found in Darwin’s tangled bank, strangely comforting.