[Leps-l] [leps-talk] Monarch Armageddon

Paul Cherubini monarch at saber.net
Wed Feb 20 13:55:23 EST 2013


On Feb 20, 2013, at 9:34 AM, Foley, Patrick wrote:

> Pyle et al. (2010, Xerces Society) estimate commercial
> Monarch release at about 11 million butterflies/year.

Biologically irrelevant to the claim that shipping WILD 
FIELD CAUGHT western monarchs to the eastern USA
could cause the collapse of the eastern monarch migration.

> Pathogen and parasite spillover is now well documented from
> commercial to wild bumblebees. The effect on several
> North American Bombus species has been enormous=
> (Robin Thorp).

Biologically irrelevant to the claim that shipping WILD 
FIELD CAUGHT western monarchs to the eastern USA
could cause the collapse of the eastern monarch migration.

Also the effects of that protozoan parasite spillover from 
greenhouses were localized and minimal, not "enormous".
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002771
Excerpt from abstract: "In the field, we did not observe a 
large epizootic wave of infection.."

> Sonia Altizer et al.  (2000 in ecological Entomology)
> have shown that nonmigratory South Florida Monarchs
> show higher protozoan parasite levels than the Western
> short-distance migrants, and these show higher parasite
> loads than the long-distance Eastern Monarch migrants.

In 1996 the San Diego based Monarch Program found 
the monarchs overwintering at the southernmost cluster
sites along the Pacific coast have very low protozoan parasite 
spore counts:
http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/uu87/4ALC/spore.jpg 
despite the fact they migrated only a short distance from 
summer breeding areas. This fact contradicts Dr. Altizer's 
hypothesis that monarch populations that migrate only 
a short distance will have high spore counts.  

Also, this parasite is not known to be seriously lethal in the
wild migratory monarch populations.  Indeed, Altizer admitted
in her lecture at UC Davis last year that some heavily infected 
adult eastern migrant monarchs survive to complete the 
roundtrip migration from the northern USA to the overwintering
sites in central Mexico and back to Texas in the spring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QS0FOqK97Y

Thus we continue to see there is no credible scientific basis 
underlying the beliefs of Brower, Oberhauser and Taylor
that a few that a few citizen scientists like myself could 
inadvertently cause the collapse of the whole eastern 
monarch migration-overwintering phenomenon via shipping 
a few thousand wild field caught western monarchs to the 
eastern USA.

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.



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