- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The article, “Complexity, Humility and Action: A Current Perspective on Monarchs in Western North America,” is “meant to provide a concise review of and perspective on recent western monarch research,” Yang said.
The western monarch population overwinters along the California coast. Estimated at 4.5 million in the 1980s, it has dropped significantly over the past five years, the professor related, noting an “86% single-year population decline in 2018, an overwintering population of less than 2000 butterflies in 2020, and an unexpected >100-fold increase in 2021."
Yang defined the western monarch population as occupying "a geographically distinct region of North America west of the Rocky Mountain...Ongoing climate change has made the western monarch range warmer, drier, and more prone to heatwaves, wildfires, and winter storms with complex effects on their ecology. Land development and changes in the structure of landscape mosaics have modified both the breeding and overwintering habitats of western monarch butterflies, changing the spatial distribution of resources and risks across their range. Shifts in agricultural and horticultural practice have changed the nature of potentially deleterious chemicals in the environment, including novel herbicides and insecticides."
Yang said the spread of non-native milkweed species has likely had both positive and negative consequences for western monarchs, and more research is needed.
His three suggestions:
- "First, we should continue to support both basic and applied monarch research. This includes efforts to better understand fundamental aspects of monarch biology, studies to examine the ecological factors that limit monarch populations in the West and efforts to improve more targeted adaptive management and monitoring efforts. Basic research in monarch biology and ecology improves our understanding of this complex system and can inform conservation actions in profound and unexpected ways. In turn, applied research can address recognized gaps in knowledge that would otherwise limit available strategies for conservation planning and management."
- "Second, recognizing the limits of our current understanding, we should follow the precautionary principle to minimize the risk of counterproductive action. The complexity of this system makes it difficult to anticipate or assume future changes in behavior, species interactions or population dynamics. In practice, this may mean prioritizing efforts to better understand and facilitate existing mechanisms of ecological resilience and recovery over direct actions to manipulate or augment the population with less certain consequences. More broadly, this approach would probably emphasize common sense approaches to mitigate the widely recognized upstream drivers of global change (e.g., climate change and land use change), rather than those requiring a detailed understanding of their complex, interactive effects on species-specific ecologies further downstream."
- "Third, we should work to improve, protect and maintain the resources required throughout the complex monarch life cycle. In part, this likely means prioritizing conservation efforts that target the times and places that are likely to have the greatest positive effects, building on the common ground of available science. In the case of western monarchs, this includes protecting current and future overwintering habitats, the resources required for population expansion in the early season, and the resources required for the fall migration. Recognizing the potentially widespread and pervasive effects of pesticides, this could also mean efforts to develop more ecologically realistic and relevant metrics for the regulation of environmental chemicals."
Yang opined that "In the broader context, many of the drivers that are contributing to western monarch population declines are likely to also be affecting other species. In turn, many of the strategies that would support monarch conservation would likely benefit other species, and many of the strategies that would benefit other species are likely to also support monarch conservation. As we build on currently available science to better understand and protect the western monarch population, it is imperative that we continue to grapple with the inherent complexity of this system and respond with appropriate humility and necessary action."
Among the 54 scientific publications that Yang referenced was a research article co-authored by UC Davis Distinguished Professor Art Shapiro, who has studied butterfly populations in Central California since 1972. The article, "Fewer Butterflies Seen by Community Scientists across the Warming and Drying Landscapes of the American West," published in Science in March 2021, covered data from the Shapiro transect, the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) community count data and the iNaturalist community observation data. The study observed widespread declines across 450 butterfly species, including the monarch butterfly, in the American West. The authors estimated a 1.6 percent decrease in overall butterfly abundance each year over a 42-year period from 1977 to 2018.
Editors of the journal, Current Opinion in Insect Science, describe it as "a new systematic review journal that aims to provide specialists with a unique and educational platform to keep up–to–date with the expanding volume of information published in the field of insect science."
Yang's research is supported by a National Science Foundation award. He was a guest on National Public Radio's Science Friday in February 2022. Listen to the interview here.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“This study collected a high-resolution temporal dataset on milkweed-monarch interactions during the last three years prior to the precipitous single-year population decline of western monarchs in 2018,” said community ecologist Louie Yang, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Yang organized and led a 135-member team, all co-authors of the paper, “Different Factors Limit Early- and Late-Season Windows of Opportunity for Monarch Development,” published in the journal Ecology and Evolution. (This document is open access at https://bit.ly/3volFaI.)
From 2015 through 2017, the team monitored the interactions of monarchs, Danaus plexippus, on narrow-leaved milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis, planted in December 2013on city-owned property adjacent to the North Davis irrigation channel.
“This study has three key findings,” the UC Davis professor said. “First, we documented early and late seasonal windows of opportunity in the wild, migratory western monarch population. Second, our data suggest that early and late seasonal windows were constrained by different factors. Third, climatic and microclimatic variation had a strong effect on the timing and importance of multiple factors affecting monarch development. Broadly, we hope that this study contributes to a more temporally detailed understanding of the complex factors that contribute to year-to-year variation in monarch breeding success.”
Feared on its way to extinction, the migratory monarch is now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as Endangered—threatened by habitat destruction and climate change. Statistics show that the overwintering population of western monarchs along coastal California has declined by more than 99 percent since the 1980s, according to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
The UC Davis-based team set out to answer three questions: (1) How do the developmental prospects of monarchs vary in time, within- and across years? (2) How do the combined effects of bottom-up, top-down, and abiotic factors interact with seasonal variation in monarch density to constrain the timing and extent of seasonal windows of opportunity? and (3) How do climatic variation and microhabitat heterogeneity affect these constraints?
The results showed that different combinations of factors constrained the early- and late-season windows of opportunity for monarch recruitment. “Early-season windows of opportunity were characterized by high egg densities and low survival on a select subset of host plants, consistent with the hypothesis that early-spring migrant female monarchs select earlier-emerging plants to balance a seasonal trade-off between increasing host plant quantity and decreasing host plant quality,” the abstract relates. “Late-season windows of opportunity were coincident with the initiation of host plant senescence, and caterpillar success was negatively correlated with heatwave exposure, consistent with the hypothesis that late-season windows were constrained by plant defense traits and thermal stress.”
The researchers also noted:
- “Throughout this study, climatic and microclimatic variations played a foundational role in the timing and success of monarch developmental windows by affecting bottom-up, top-down, and abiotic limitations. More exposed microclimates were associated with higher developmental success during cooler conditions, and more shaded microclimates were associated with higher developmental success during warmer conditions, suggesting that habitat heterogeneity could buffer the effects of climatic variation.”
- “Together, these findings show an important dimension of seasonal change in milkweed-monarch interactions and illustrate how different biotic and abiotic factors can limit the developmental success of monarchs across the breeding season. These results also suggest the potential for seasonal sequences of favorable or unfavorable conditions across the breeding range to strongly affect monarch population dynamics.”
Yang and his team planted 318 narrow-leaved milkweed adjacent to the seasonal irrigation channel, which carries runoff water with a “seasonal pattern of generally increased flow during summer irrigation periods and immediately following winter precipitation events. As a result, this site combines several elements representative of the California Central Valley at a landscape scale.” The Davis site typifies a “Mediterranean pattern of cool, wet winters and hot dry summers.”
The researchers recorded daily temperatures and precipitation in one dataset, and in a second dataset, sub-hourly temperature observations, approximately every 20 minutes. They defined the “early season” as days 90–180 (approximately the end of March to the end of June) and the late season as days 180–270 (approximately the end of June to the end of September) each year.”
They measured and recorded the milkweed growth and leaf area removal by herbivores, and counted and measured the eggs and larvae. They also gathered information on the predator and herbivore community.
MMMILC Project. Participants in the Monitoring Milkweed–Monarch Interactions for Learning and Conservation (MMMILC) Project, directed by Yang, collected most of the observations. Yang provided hands-on, in-person training in milkweed-monarch biology, data collection, and data entry protocols, partnering with the Environmental Science internship program led by Eric Bastin at Davis Senior High School and the Growing Green internship program led by Karen Swan at the Center for Land-based Learning, Woodland.
“We documented 674 weekly observations of monarch eggs and 997 weekly observations of monarch caterpillars across the three years of this study,” the researchers wrote. “Monarchs were most numerous in 2016. We observed 2.7 times as many monarch eggs in 2016 as in 2015 and 2.2 times as many as in 2017. We observed 3.0 times as many caterpillars in 2016 as in 2015, and 2.5 times as many as in 2017. Separated by year and normalized by the total number of emerged plants each year, we observed 137 eggs and 193 caterpillars (0.49 egg and 0.69 caterpillar observations per plant) in 2015, 369 eggs and 576 caterpillars (1.55 egg and 2.42 caterpillar observations per plant) in 2016 and 168 eggs and 226 caterpillars (0.74 egg and 1.0 caterpillar observations per plant) in 2017.
Among their research findings:
- The early and late monarch developmental periods were generally warmer in 2017 than in the two previous years.
- The number of surviving emerged plants declined over the 3-year study, from 281 (88.3 percent) in 2015, to 238 (75 percent) in 2016 to 226 (71 percent) in 2017. However, an increasing proportion of the surviving plants attained a total stem length exceeding 50 cm across these same years: 137 (49 percent of 281) in 2015, 144 (61 percent of 238) in 2016, and 175 (77 percent of 226).
- The growth of milkweeds changed dramatically in 2017 following the rainy winter of 2016–2017. Milkweeds in 2017 attained sizes (maximum weekly mean total stem lengths) that were 70 percent larger than in 2015, and 64 percent larger than in 2016, and the variance of the plant size distribution also increased.
- Milkweed emerged earliest in 2016 (mean emergence day 110) and nearly four weeks later in 2017 (mean emergence day 137).
Unfortunately, a City of Davis maintenance crew unintentionally mowed the site on May 5, 2017, “damaging several plants in this population. However, most plants in the population were below the height of the mower blades at this point in the growing season.”
Today the milkweed population at the North Davis Channel is being maintained by the City of Davis and dedicated citizens, including Larry Snyder, who documented the project in photographs. “We aren't monitoring there intensively, but we've seen monarch eggs, caterpillars and adults there this year,” Yang said.
More monarch projects from the Louie Yang lab are pending. “The next paper in press represents research done several years ago and is focused on the timing of herbivory and its effects on flowering,” he said. “We are studying several California milkweed species.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The seminar, sponsored by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will be hosted by assistant professor Joanna Chiu.
Merlin joined Texas A&M's Department of Biology in the fall of 2013 and is a member of the Center for Biological Clocks Research.
The eastern North American monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) has emerged as a powerful model system to study animal circadian clocks and their role in an unconventional output, the photoperiod-induced long-distance migration," Merlin says in her abstract.
"Circadian clocks are endogenous 24-hour timekeepers that coordinate nearly all of the animal physiology and behavior to its environment to tune specific activities at the most advantageous time of the day. Monarchs use a circadian clock to navigate to their overwintering sites during their seasonal long-distance migration. The clock time-compensates for the movement of the sun across the sky over the course of the day and regulates the sun compass output in the brain. Circadian clocks could also be used to time the monarch seasonal departure from their breeding grounds, and consequently regulate the genetic/epigenetic program controlling migratory physiology and behavior."
In a news story written by Vimal Patel of the Texas A&M communications office, Merlin is described as zeroing in on "unraveling the mysteries of the migration and the role of internal clocks in the process."
Merlin was quoted as saying: "It's incredible how such a fragile insect can complete a long-range migration so demanding. Every piece of it fascinates me, from how it occurs to why they go precisely where they go."
An excerpt from Patel's piece:
"While she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the laboratory of Prof. Steven Reppert, Merlin and colleagues showed that the clocks necessary for flight orientation lie in the creatures' antennae -- a departure from the previous conventional wisdom that the brain controlled the mechanism, given that it controls behavioral rhythmicity in virtually every other animal, including humans.
"The conclusion stemmed from Merlin's and her co-workers' collective curiosity concerning a decades-old anecdote. Around 50 years ago, entomologist Fred Urquhart found that Monarchs became disoriented after he clipped off their antennae. Since then, it had remained just a suspicion until the Massachusetts team confirmed it with more rigorous research."
"The team's experiment exploited technology in a way Urquhart, who merely observed the Monarchs in flight, could not at the time. They used a plastic barrel-like device called a Mouritsen-Frost flight simulator in which a butterfly is connected by tungsten wire to an output system that indicates which direction it is flying. The results were clear: The antennae-less Monarchs flew in every which direction, while those with intact antennae flew southwesterly, the migratory direction."
Merlin says she's interested in the role of the circadian clock in the induction of the migration. "Migration begins every year in the fall, when the day lengths change," she says. "The shortened day lengths might be a cue for the monarchs to start their migration. And if we can show this is the case and that the circadian clock is involved, we can now start to understand the genetic program that is allowing the migratory behavior."
A native of France, Merlin received her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees majoring in animal biology, invertebrate physiology and insect physiology, respectively, at the University Paris 6 Pierre and Marie Curie in France. She accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Massachusetts in 2007.
Related Links:
- Christine Merlin Lab
- A recent story involved Merlin's partnership with the Texas A&M Center for Mathematics and Science Education's Craig Wilson, along with local mayors and resident monarch enthusiasts within the Bryan-College Station community.