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

[Foley, Patrick]

Paul,

I was not trying to reply to you, point for point, I was making some general points that undermine the view that Monarch releases are totally safe. You have supported commercial Monarch releases for decades.

How is it you do not see the range collapse of several North American bumblebee species as not enormous? I did not claim it is always enormous, nor do I think it is.

Altizer provides data about highly parasitized Monarchs, not just hypotheses. Facts don't contradict other facts, they need to be synthesized into some theory that takes everything into account. Since you ignore any facts (as irrelevant) that do not fit your theory, you are unlikely to come to a synthesis that honestly reflects all the data.

You are happy with some of Altizer's data, but disregard the rest. Why is that?

Your comments shift from the sensible scientific to wild accusations of scientific alarmism and hypocrisy to demands for legalistic  courtroom proof to pure rhetoric. This is not the way science is done. I appreciate your scientific points, the rest distracts and annoys. 


Patrick Foley
bees, fleas, flowers, disease
patfoley at csus.edu
________________________________________
From: leps-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [leps-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] on behalf of Paul Cherubini [monarch at saber.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:55 AM
To: Leps List
Subject: Re: [Leps-l] [leps-talk] Monarch Armageddon

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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