10.25338/B80629
Freedman, Micah
0000-0003-1739-1864
University of Chicago
Perspective piece: Comparison of eastern and western North American
monarch butterflies
Dryad
dataset
2021
Ecology and evolutionary biology
2021-04-26T00:00:00Z
2021-04-26T00:00:00Z
en
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202009.0353/v1
101031249 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Monarch butterflies are a species of conservation priority due to
declining overwintering populations in both eastern and western North
America. Declines in western overwintering monarchs—more than 99.9% since
monitoring began—are especially acute. However, the degree to which
western monarchs are a distinct biological entity is uncertain. In this
review, we focus on phenotypic and genetic differentiation between eastern
and western monarchs, with the goal of informing researchers and
policy-makers who are interested in monarch conservation. Eastern and
western monarchs occupy distinct environments and show some evidence for
phenotypic differentiation, particularly for migration-associated traits,
though population genetic and genomic studies suggest that they are
indistinguishable from one another. We suggest future studies that could
improve our understanding of differences between eastern and western
monarchs. We also discuss the concept of adaptive capacity in eastern and
western monarchs as well as non-migratory populations outside of the
monarch’s primary North American range. Finally, we discuss the prospect
of completely losing migratory monarchs from western North America and
what this entails for monarch conservation.
All data analyzed in this manuscript come from publically available data
sources. Climate data consist of the following data types: 30-year
climate normals (PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University) Bioclimatic
variables (Worldclim 1) Canadian historical climate data
(https://climate.weather.gc.ca) Monarch butterfly occurrence records
come from: All records: GBIF (dataset ID: doi.org/10.15468/dl.jx7wck)
Larvae, pupae, egg records: iNaturalist (imported via the iNatTools
package in R using the following URL and search terms:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=48662&term_id=1&term_value_id=4,6,7) Population numbers come from: Eastern North America: WWF Mexico Western North America: Xerces Society Thanksgiving Day Counts
Scripts used for analysis can be found at the following
URL: https://github.com/micahfreedman/manuscripts/tree/master/Freedman_et_al_monarch_perspective_piece