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Migration is long-range, seasonal movement from one region or habitat to another. This common strategy, carried out by many different organisms around the world, is an adaptive response that typically corresponds to changes in an organism’s environment, like resource availability or climate. Migrations can involve huge groups of thousands of animals as well as single individuals traveling alone and can range from thousands of kilometers to just a few hundred meters.
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Changes in climate drive recent monarch butterfly dynamics.

Erin R Zylstra1, Leslie Ries2, Naresh Neupane2

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This summary is machine-generated.

Climate change significantly impacts monarch butterfly populations, affecting their summer numbers more than other factors. This highlights the growing role of changing weather patterns in insect declines.

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Conservation Biology
  • Entomology

Background:

  • Insect declines threaten global ecosystems.
  • Monarch butterfly populations in eastern North America have declined significantly over 30 years.
  • Potential causes include herbicide use, migration/overwintering mortality, and climate change.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To evaluate the hypotheses explaining monarch butterfly population changes.
  • To identify key drivers of monarch population fluctuations over 25 years.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized a hierarchical modeling approach.
  • Analyzed data from over 18,000 systematic surveys spanning 25 years.
  • Assessed the relative importance of host plant availability, migration/overwintering factors, and breeding-season climate.

Main Results:

  • Breeding-season weather was a primary driver of monarch summer population size between 2004-2018, seven times more influential than other factors.
  • Summer population size positively correlated with the subsequent overwintering population.
  • Breeding-season weather was also a key factor in monarch population dynamics during 1994-2003, the period of steepest decline.

Conclusions:

  • Changing spring and summer climate conditions may render parts of the monarch's current breeding range unsuitable.
  • Climate change is an increasingly significant contributor to insect population declines.
  • Understanding climate's role is crucial for monarch butterfly conservation efforts.