Subspecies and protection

Paul Cherubini cherubini at mindspring.com
Tue Oct 17 17:33:14 EDT 2000


Jean-Michel MAES wrote:

> Dear Paul Cherubini,
> In the book you mention, which name of subspecies do the use ?

The author of the paper on the migratory monarch of Costa Rica
didn't specify a subspecies. He just said Danaus plexippus.

However in the same book* there is another paper by 
Richard Vane-Wright, a Danaid butterfly biogeographer,
which provided distribution maps for Danaus plexippus
plexippus.  These maps show Danaus plexippus plexippus
(the temperate North American monarch) very widely distributed
in the central and western Pacific Ocean area islands, both in 
the northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere and 
equatorial regions.  

In this regard, Patrick Foley might also be interested to know 
Lincoln Brower and the 13 other monarch scientists who so
profoundly opposed transfers and releases of monarchs across 
the Rocky Mountains within the USA wrote in their Sept 1995
article in BioScience:

"Human-caused gene flow could make it impossible to estimate
the degree to which natural interchange of monarch butterflies
across the Rocky Mountains occurred in the past. Transfers could
also muddle our ability to understand the monarch's 19th century
trans-Pacific dispersal, including the pattern of island hopping and
colonizations of Australia and New Zealand (Vane-Wright, 1993)."

Paul Cherubini

*Biology and Conservation of the Monarch Butterfly, edited by Malcolm 
& Zalucki, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, 1993

 
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