Stored fuel's importance for migrating monarch butterflies: Implications for conserving all migrant animals

Abstract

Stored fuel's importance for migrating monarch butterflies: Implications for conserving all migrant animals In his latest research, Keith A. Hobson, Research Scientist and Professor at Western University, explores why stored fuel is critical to migrating animals, such as monarch butterflies. Conserving migratory animals in a rapidly changing world requires we quickly and efficiently determine the most critical or vulnerable points in their annual cycles that typically involve numerous locations spread over hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Although we know migration routes or connections between breeding and wintering regions for many species of concern, how animals fuel their migration along migratory paths and how their nutritional needs are affected by various factors generally remains unknown. In times of current and predicted climate change, the added burdens of weather extremes add to the many threats facing migrants. So it is ever more urgent to ensure that our conservation efforts and funds are directed at the most critical locations temporally and spatially.