Saving the eastern monarch butterfly: SFU research
Researchers analyzed current conservation strategies and recommended changes to how and where declining milkweed (an essential food source for butterfly larvae) can be restored
2021-05-18
(Press-News.org) Simon Fraser University researchers are playing a key role in guiding conservation efforts to protect a declining butterfly population. The eastern monarch butterfly, an important pollinating species known for its distinct yellow-orange and black colour, is diminishing due to the loss of the milkweed plant--its primary food source.
Researchers analyzed current conservation strategies and recommended changes to how and where declining milkweed can be restored, based on assessments of climate and butterfly migration. Their study is published today in Frontiers in Environmental Science.
SFU PhD student Rodrigo Solis-Sosa and professor Sean Cox, from the School of Resource and Environmental Management, led the study with biological sciences professor Arne Mooers. The trio collaborated with Christina Semeniuk, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) and study co-writer Maxim Larrivée, director of the Insectarium de Montréal, one of the five Montréal's Space for Life museums.
Solis-Sosa says researchers hope to prevent the eastern monarch butterfly from the same fate as the western population, which typically migrated from the Okanagan to California each winter. This year's measurements of western monarch butterfly colonies found "zero overwintering populations, putting them at an all-time low and closer to extinction," he explains.
Eastern monarch butterflies overwinter in Mexico from November to March then migrate and reproduce across the U.S. before reaching eastern Canada in late August.
Milkweed has declined across the U.S. due to clearing land for agricultural use, GMO crops, herbicides and climate change. While identifying the U.S. midwest as the best place to focus on restoration efforts, given optimal weather and milkweed availability when the monarch butterfly arrives, the team also found that the southern U.S. has a paramount yet somewhat neglected role.
"While increasing the number of milkweed stems in the South wasn't as effective as in the Midwest, decreasing their number in the South was catastrophic," says Solis-Sosa. "While the South may not play a huge role in increasing the eastern monarch butterfly population, it acts as a safety net."
Researchers also found that recommended estimates of between 1.2 and 1.6 billion milkweed stems falls short of supporting butterfly populations-- by 50 to 90 percent. Existing conservation models don't factor in the effects of drought, changes in temperature and the stem's effective usability by the monarch butterflies.
"Monarchs may need at least three billion stems to reach a safe minimum threshold population of six overwintering hectares," says Solis-Sosa. The population once covered the equivalent of 18 hectares over its wintering territory nearly 25 years ago, but that hasn't risen above six over the past decade. The latest measure has dwindled to just 2.3 overwintering hectares.
Communities in Mexico also depend on monarch butterfly ecotourism as an essential part of their livelihoods. "Monarch butterflies also hold a special significance in traditional Mexican culture," says Solis-Sosa. "They arrive in Mexico by November 2--the Day of the Dead--and symbolize the dead souls of loved ones arriving to comfort them through the dark and cold winter season. Losing the monarch butterfly would represent a cultural loss to the Mexican people."
Solis-Sosa says their research will help policymakers across North America update conservation strategies and has already led to discussions with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC supports cooperation between North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners to address environmental issues of continental concern.
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-18
As the global energy demand continues to grow along with atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), there has been a major push to adopt more sustainable and more carbon-neutral energy sources. Solar/wind power and CO2 capture - the process of capturing waste CO2 so it is not introduced into the atmosphere - are two promising pathways for decarbonization, but both have significant drawbacks.
Solar and wind power is intermittent and cannot be deployed everywhere; CO2 capture processes are incredibly energy-intensive. Both of these pathways have benefits, but each ...
2021-05-18
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Mindfulness-based meditation programs have emerged as a promising treatment for conditions ranging from stress to sleeplessness to depression. In some cases, they're even offered to people -- schoolkids or employees, for example -- who aren't actively seeking help or who haven't been screened for suitability. Yet most research and discourse about these programs focuses only on their benefits, with little investigation of the risks or the potential for adverse effects.
A recent review of nearly 7,000 studies of meditation practices found that less than 1% of them measured adverse effects. Willoughby Britton, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, said that this is largely because ...
2021-05-18
New research from BYU published in PLOS Medicine found that providing medical patients with social support leads to an increased chance of survival and elongation of life. Such findings come at a critical time as doctors and healthcare professionals seek new ways to improve care and decrease mortality.
"The premise of the research is that everyone is strongly influenced by their social context," said BYU counseling psychology professor Timothy B. Smith, lead author of the study. "Relationships influence our behavior and our physical health. We now know that it is possible to prolong ...
2021-05-18
ITHACA, N.Y. - Wines and table grapes exist thanks to a genetic exchange so rare that it's only happened twice in nature in the last 6 million years. And since the domestication of the grapevine 8,000 years ago, breeding has continued to be a gamble.
When today's growers cultivate new varieties - trying to produce better-tasting and more disease-resistant grapes - it takes two to four years for breeders to learn whether they have the genetic ingredients for the perfect flower.
Females set fruit, but produce sterile pollen. Males have stamens for pollen, but lack fruit. The perfect flower, however, carries both sex genes and can self-pollinate. These hermaphroditic varieties generally yield bigger and better-tasting berry ...
2021-05-18
Due to climate change, the average global temperature will rise in the coming decades. This should also significantly increase the number of so-called cooling degree days. These measure the number of hours, in which the ambient temperature is above a certain threshold, at which a building must be cooled to keep the indoor temperature at a comfortable level. The rising values may lead to an increased installation of AC systems in households. This could lead to a higher energy demand for cooling buildings, which is already expected to increase due to climate change and population growth.
Nip-and-tuck ...
2021-05-18
Scientists have long thought that there was a direct connection between the rise in atmospheric oxygen, which started with the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago, and the rise of large, complex multicellular organisms.
That theory, the "Oxygen Control Hypothesis," suggests that the size of these early multicellular organisms was limited by the depth to which oxygen could diffuse into their bodies. The hypothesis makes a simple prediction that has been highly influential within both evolutionary biology and geosciences: Greater atmospheric oxygen should always increase the size to which multicellular organisms can grow. ...
2021-05-18
When a person views a familiar image, even having seen it just once before for a few seconds, something unique happens in the human brain.
Until recently, neuroscientists believed that vigorous activity in a visual part of the brain called the inferotemporal (IT) cortex meant the person was looking at something novel, like the face of a stranger or a never-before-seen painting. Less IT cortex activity, on the other hand, indicated familiarity.
But something about that theory, called repetition suppression, didn't hold up for University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Nicole Rust. "Different images produce different amounts of activation even when they are all novel," says ...
2021-05-18
The combination of a carb-heavy diet and poor oral hygiene can leave children with early childhood caries (ECC), a severe form of dental decay that can have a lasting impact on their oral and overall health.
A few years ago, scientists from Penn's School of Dental Medicine found that the dental plaque that gives rise to ECC is composed of both a bacterial species, Streptococcus mutans, and a fungus, Candida albicans. The two form a sticky symbiosis, known scientifically as a biofilm, that becomes extremely virulent and difficult to displace from the tooth surface.
Now, a new study from the group offers a strategy for disrupting this biofilm by targeting the yeast-bacterial interactions ...
2021-05-18
In studying COVID-19 testing and positivity rates in West Virginia between March and September 2020, West Virginia University researchers found disparities among Black residents and residents experiencing food insecurity.
Specifically, the researchers found communities with a higher Black population had testing rates six times lower than the state average, which they argue could potentially obscure prevalence estimates. They also found that areas associated with food insecurity had higher levels of testing and a higher rate of positivity.
"This could mean that public health officials are targeting predominately rural areas to keep tabs on how the pandemic will unfold in isolated communities within higher food insecurity," said Brian Hendricks, a research assistant professor with ...
2021-05-18
Australian scientists have compared an ancient Greek technique of memorising data to an even older technique from Aboriginal culture, using students in a rural medical school.
The study found that students using a technique called memory palace in which students memorised facts by placinthem into a memory blueprint of the childhood home, allowing them to revisit certain rooms to recapture that data. Another group of students were taught a technique developed by Australian Aboriginal people over more than 50,000 years of living in a custodial relationship with the Australian land.
The ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Saving the eastern monarch butterfly: SFU research
Researchers analyzed current conservation strategies and recommended changes to how and where declining milkweed (an essential food source for butterfly larvae) can be restored