Overview

• Anglia Ruskin University, Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park and Nature’s SAFE announced the collaboration to test whether frozen eggs can support long-term conservation.
• Captive eggs from the European subspecies Papilio machaon gorganus will be frozen in liquid nitrogen and assessed against non-frozen controls for survival and breeding performance.
• Project leaders say this appears to be the first attempt to cryopreserve butterfly eggs, so viability and life‑history impacts are not yet known.
• The British Swallowtail is confined to East Anglia, is listed as vulnerable on the GB Red List and has declined 57% over two decades due to habitat loss, climate change and genetic erosion.
• If the methods succeed, banked eggs could underpin captive-breeding and reintroduction plans and inform cryopreservation approaches for other pollinators and invertebrates.