Ecological niches in sequential generations of eastern North American monarch butterflies (Lepidoptera: Danaide): The ecology of migration and likely climate change implications
Issue Date
2007-12Author
Batalden, Rebecca V.
Oberhauser, Karen
Peterson, A. Townsend
Publisher
Entomological Society of America
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
This article is the copyright property of the Entomological Society of America and may not be used for any commercial or other private purpose without specific written permission of the Entomological Society of America
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Show full item recordAbstract
Eastern North American monarch butterßies (Danaus plexippus L.) show a series of
range shifts during their breeding season. Using ecological niche modeling, we studied the environmental
context of these shifts by identifying the ecological conditions that monarchs use in successive
summer months. Monarchs use a consistent ecological regimen through the summer, but these
conditions contrast strikingly with those used during the winter. Hence, monarchs exhibit nichefollowing
among sequential breeding generations but niche-switching between the breeding and
overwintering stages of their annual cycle.Weprojected their breeding ecological niche onto monthly
future climate scenarios, which indicated northward shifts, particularly at the northern extreme of
their summer movements, over the next 50 yrs; if both monarchs and their milkweed host plants cannot
track these changing climates, monarchs could lose distributional area during critical breeding months.
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Citation
Batalden, R. V., K. S. Oberhauser, and A. T. Peterson. 2007. Ecological niches in sequential generations of eastern North American monarch butterflies: The ecology of migration and likely climate change implications. Environmental Entomology 36:1365-1373.
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