Subspecies and protection

[Kenelm Philip]

> I consider the unique migration phenomenon in N.A. plexippus to be a
> blatantly, unarguably, obvious evidence of subspeciation.

Very little on Leps-L is unarguable.  :-)

	As I have mentioned before, there was a fascinating paper at the
1986 Lep. Soc. meeting (Ottawa) on the migration of western Monarchs,
which pointed out that they can be trapped by (temporarily) suitable
conditions in gullies at the foot of desert ranges. In other words, there
does not appear to be any innate requirement that they _complete_ the
migration to the Pacific coast. The migratory urge may be far less
focused than many people have assumed. This raises an interesting possi-
bility: that Monarchs from any part of the continent would, when introduced
into another part of North America, would migrate along with the other
individuals from that region. In that case, migration patterns would be
totally unrelated to subspeciation.

	Have any experiments along these lines been carried out? The
problem is that large numbers would be needed, and that is just what many
Monarch biologists don't want to do. Maybe we need to try this with
sterilized males?

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu