(A-62) EXCITING MONARCH BUTTERFLY RESEARCH!

As a member of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP), I received their July newsletter today. It contained exciting research news about the Monarch butterfly. In sum, they found that long migrations of Monarch butterflies rid them of parisites, particularly the protozoan parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE). OE is very infectious to adult Monarchs and many accumulate large quantities of the freeloading sponger. According to the MLMP newsletter, OE increases rapidly as the Monarch breeding season progresses, due to the rising densities of larvae, which aid OE spore transmission.

Researchers Rebecca A. Bartel and Sonia Altizer of the University of Georgia, Jaap de Roode of Emory University, and Karen Oberhauser have recently used MLMP and MonarchHealth breeding season data to arrive at this phenomena of OE parasite population density vs. length of migration finding. In two out of three years examined, parasite prevalence dropped between its peak in the final summer breeding phase and the butterflies' wintering period in Mexico. As the monarchs migrated south, the proportion of insects carrying heavy parasite loads kiminished. Their conclusion is that migration provides an opportunity to escape from habitats that might build up levels of diseases, and also to cull out susceptible individuals. This research is published in the journal Ecology.

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