Wednesday, October 1, 2014

How the monarch butterfly lost its migration


Some monarch butterfly populations don’t migrate. They live in tropical areas of the world, and don’t get as much press as the North American populations that show up en masse on weather radars. But for scientists who study monarchs, they’re critical to understanding the bugs. They’re the reason that most researchers think that these insects first evolved in South America as a non-migratory species, and only started migrating a few hundred years ago, once they moved into the US. And, if a study published today in Nature is further supported, they’ll also be the reason that we were just plain wrong.


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