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Sunday, May 1, 2016

Lack of Milkweed Is Not Harming Monarch Butterfly Populations, New Research Suggests

April 29, 2016 by 1 Comment


People who attended the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America are likely to remember Dr. Anurag Agrawal, who talked about Dame Miriam Rothschild when he presented the Founders’ Memorial Award lecture. The ESA Founders’ Memorial Award is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon an entomologist.

Now Dr. Agrawal is talking again, but this time it’s about monarch butterflies.

Some groups have blamed herbicides and genetically modified crops for the decline of monarch populations, but new research by Dr. Agrawal and colleagues suggests that lack of milkweed is unlikely to be driving the monarch’s population decline.

Using years of data collected by the World Wildlife Fund and citizen scientists across North America, the researchers looked at monarch populations throughout North America during different times of the year. They found that monarch numbers begin declining at the end of the summer, when the butterflies begin their long migration to Mexico, and the numbers continue to decline as they travel. During this southern migration, adult monarchs do not feed on milkweed, so lack of milkweed is unlikely to be the problem, according to the researchers.......To Read More

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