Monarch Butterfly Research Articles

Timing of a plant-herbivore interaction alters plant growth and reproduction.

Phenological shifts have the potential to change species interactions, but relatively few studies have used experimental manipulations to examine the effects of variation in timing of an interspecific interaction across a series of life stages of a species. Although previous experimental studies have examined the consequences of phenological timing in plant-herbivore interactions for both plants and their herbivores, less is known about their effects on subsequent plant reproduction. Here, we conducted an experiment to determine how shifts in the phenological timing of monarch (Danaus plexippus) larval herbivory affected milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) host plant performance, including effects on growth and subsequent effects on flower and seed pod phenology and production. We found that variation in the timing of herbivory affected both plant growth and reproduction, with measurable effects several weeks to several months after herbivory ended. The timing of herbivory had qualitatively different effects on vegetative and reproductive biomass: early-season herbivory had the strongest effects on plant size, whereas late-season herbivory had the strongest effects on the production of viable seeds. These results show that phenological shifts in herbivory can have persistent and qualitatively different effects on different life stages across the season.

What do monarchs feed on in winter? Nectar sources at hibernation sites

IntroductionThe steep population decline of the emblematic monarch butterfly is caused mainly by the reduction of food sources for caterpillars and adults, as well as disturbance in its overwintering forests. Although feeding at the overwintering sites in Mexico has long been considered unimportant, observations show that butterflies feed inside and outside of their forests on sunny days. Nectaring close to the hibernation colonies may be relevant for their conservation, as their reserves decline faster in disturbed forests. However, there are no systematic studies on nectar sources in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Michoacán, Mexico.AimsIn this study, we identified and quantified the main plant species visited by butterflies for nectaring in the Reserve.MethodsWe collected systematic observational data on the flora and butterfly visits in three sanctuaries, around colonies formed between February and March of the 2019–2020 season.ResultsButterflies fed on 29 plant species from 10 families. Most had white, yellow or blue flowers, were somewhat synanthropic and had their main flowering season in winter. The most visited species were Salvia mexicana and S. plurispicata, which were also the most abundant. By individual plant, Prunus serotina, Crataegus mexicana, Buddleja sessiliflora, Verbesina oncophora and Roldana albonervia were the most visited.Discussion/Implications for insect conservationThe results point to possible interventions in support of the butterflies. The visited species are generally easy to encourage or cultivate and could be promoted in the surrounding agricultural areas.

Monitoring The Migrators: Tracking The Animals Passing Through Our Parks

Migrating animals are good at making long trips between seasons. These trips can be dangerous, and scientists monitor migrators in United States National Parks to help detect dangers and find solutions. However, migrators are challenging to monitor. Sometimes they only stay in a park for a few days. This might require a scramble to find them during the proper season, using specialized techniques. It is worth the effort! Birds are some of the best-known migrators, and birdwatchers come to parks every spring to help count them. Migrating butterflies and bats are less well-known and require more effort to monitor. Monarch butterflies are tagged with special numbered stickers, and bat calls are recorded at night with special computers. These monitoring activities reveal where, when, and how many migrators occur in parks. If we discover through monitoring that they are in decline, we can sound the alarm and get help for these special animals.

Lack of evidence for a fine-scale magnetic map sense for fall migratory Eastern North American monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus).

How first-time animal migrants find specific destinations remains an intriguing ecological question. Migratory marine species use geomagnetic map cues acquired as juveniles to aide long-distance migration, but less is known for long-distance migrants in other taxa. We test the hypothesis that naïve Eastern North American fall migratory monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), a species that possesses a magnetic sense, locate their overwintering sites in Central Mexico using inherited geomagnetic map cues. We examined whether overwintering locations and the abundance of monarchs changed with the natural shift of Earth's magnetic field from 2004 to 2018. We found that migratory monarchs continued to overwinter at established sites in similar abundance despite significant shifts in the geomagnetic field, which is inconsistent with monarchs using fine-scale geomagnetic map cues to find overwintering sites. It is more likely that monarchs use geomagnetic cues to assess migratory direction rather than location and use other cues to locate overwintering sites.

Ommochrome Wing Pigments in the Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae).

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) use bright orange coloration to warn off predators as well as for sexual selection. Surprisingly the underlying pigment compounds have not been previously characterized. We used LCMS and fragmentation MS (including MSMS and MSn) of extracted pigments from nonmigratory summer-generation female monarch forewings to identify and provide relative quantitation of various orange pigments from D. plexippus. We observed seven ommochrome pigments, with xanthommatin and decarboxylated xanthommatin being the most abundant followed by xanthommatin methyl ester. Among the seven pigments, we also observed molecules that correspond to deaminated forms of these three amine-containing pigments. To the best of our knowledge, these deaminated compounds have not been previously discovered. A seventh pigment that we observed was α-hydroxyxanthommatin methyl ester, previously described in other nymphalid butterflies. We also show that chemical reduction of pigment extracts results in a change of their color from yellow to red, concomitant with the appearance of dihydro-xanthommatin and similarly reduced forms of the other pigment compounds. These findings indicate that monarchs may employ differences in the redox states of these pigments in order to achieve different hues of orange.

Objects and Action Detection of Human Faces through Thermal Images Using ANU-Net.

Thermal cameras, as opposed to RBG cameras, work effectively in extremely low illumination situations and can record data outside of the human visual spectrum. For surveillance and security applications, thermal images have several benefits. However, due to the little visual information in thermal images and intrinsic similarity of facial heat maps, completing face identification tasks in the thermal realm is particularly difficult. It can be difficult to attempt identification across modalities, such as when trying to identify a face in thermal images using the ground truth database for the matching visible light domain or vice versa. We proposed a method for detecting objects and actions on thermal human face images, based on the classification of five different features (hat, glasses, rotation, normal, and hat with glasses) in this paper. This model is presented in five steps. To improve the results of feature extraction during the pre-processing step, initially, we resize the images and then convert them to grayscale level using a median filter. In addition, features are extracted from pre-processed images using principle component analysis (PCA). Furthermore, the horse herd optimization algorithm (HOA) is employed for feature selection. Then, to detect the human face in thermal images, the LeNet-5 method is used. It is utilized to detect objects and actions in face areas. Finally, we classify the objects and actions on faces using the ANU-Net approach with the Monarch butterfly optimization (MBO) algorithm to achieve higher classification accuracy. According to experiments using the Terravic Facial Infrared Database, the proposed method outperforms "state-of-the-art" methods for face recognition in thermal images. Additionally, the results for several facial recognition tasks demonstrate good precision.

Transmission congestion management through sensitivity based rescheduling of generators using improved monarch butterfly optimization

The emergence of competitive power markets in recent decades has paved the way for the enormous increase in the number of transactions between producers and consumers to satisfy the exponentially increasing load demand. These transactions usually occur through direct bilateral, multi-lateral agreements or some common platform. However, this operation puts additional strain on the transmission network, which serves as a conduit between producers and consumers leading to congestion. As a result, satisfying all the committed power transactions under congested transmission lines economically becomes infeasible. Independent System Operator (ISO) is an entity that is responsible for ensuring congestion-free power transactions to preserve the system's security and reliability. The objective of this work is to mitigate the congestion in the network while satisfying the system constraints resulting in more stable operation with reduced line flows and low system losses. The generator sensitivity factor (GSF) is utilized to single out the generating units that need to be rescheduled to alleviate transmission lines congestion. Further, the proposed variants of Monarch Butterfly Optimization (MBO) namely Improved MBO with linear weighting factor (IMBO-LW) and chaos-embedded MBO (CHMBO) are used to reschedule the generators with an aim to minimize the cost of rescheduling and the total change in power after rescheduling. Additionally, standard benchmark functions are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed MBO variants and the same variants have been scrutinized on modified IEEE 30-bus and New England 39-bus test systems to alleviate the problem of congestion for secure and reliable operation of power system.

Revisiting geographic variation in melanism of monarch butterfly larvae in North America using iNaturalist photos

Monarch butterflies in North America have an exceptionally large breeding distribution, occupying regions west of the Rocky Mountains and throughout the eastern seaboard. An experimental study conducted 17 years ago and published in this journal appeared to show that western monarch larvae tend to have smaller black stripes than those from eastern parents, which at the time was thought to be an adaptation to higher solar exposure in California. Here, we revisit this question by measuring melanism of eastern and western larvae from online photographs submitted to iNaturalist by members of the public. We downloaded over 500 photos of larvae from 10 different states (4 in the west, 6 in the east) and used image analysis to quantify the size of each larva's black stripes (% of surface covered by black). We compared average melanism level between east and west, while also accounting for temperature (at the photo location), seasonal effects, and latitude. Results showed larvae tended to be darker with lower development temperatures, and later in the season, though there was no significant difference between eastern and western larvae in their degree of melanism. It is not yet clear why findings here were different from the prior experimental study. Also, the wild larvae appeared to be notably lighter in color than the captive-reared larvae of the original study, suggesting that the captive environment does not truly replicate the developmental experience of wild larvae, at least in terms of cuticular development. Thus, if there truly are innate tendencies for western larvae to differ (morphologically) from eastern, they are not observable in nature.

Deep cis-regulatory homology of the butterfly wing pattern ground plan.

Butterfly wing patterns derive from a deeply conserved developmental ground plan yet are diverse and evolve rapidly. It is poorly understood how gene regulatory architectures can accommodate both deep homology and adaptive change. To address this, we characterized the cis-regulatory evolution of the color pattern gene WntA in nymphalid butterflies. Comparative assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing (ATAC-seq) and in vivo deletions spanning 46 cis-regulatory elements across five species revealed deep homology of ground plan-determining sequences, except in monarch butterflies. Furthermore, noncoding deletions displayed both positive and negative regulatory effects that were often broad in nature. Our results provide little support for models predicting rapid enhancer turnover and suggest that deeply ancestral, multifunctional noncoding elements can underlie rapidly evolving trait systems.

Medical Image Fusion using ECNN- and OMBO-based Adaptive Weighted Fusion Rule

Medical imaging and information processing technologies are constantly evolving, resulting in a wide range of multimodality therapeutic pictures for clinical illness investigation. Physicians often require medical images produced using various modalities such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), and positron emission computed tomography (PET) for clinical diagnosis. Many deep learning-based fusion methods have recently been proposed. In Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based fusion methods, only the last layer results are used as the image features, which result in the loss of useful information at middle layers. The fusion rule, based on the weighted averaging, causes noises in the source images and suppresses salient features of the image. In order to solve these issues, this paper proposes medical image fusion using Enhanced CNN (ECNN)- and Opposition-based Monarch Butterfly Optimization (OMBO)-based adaptive weighted fusion rule (AWFR). The ECNN contains feature extraction and reconstruction components. Both these components are trained in order to minimize the pixel loss and structural similarity loss. A pair of multimodal medical image is passed as input to the ECNN model to extract the low level and high level features. For the extracted features from ECNN, weighted fusion rule is applied in which OMBO algorithm is applied to adaptively optimize the weights of the fusion rule.

Effects of temperature on monarch caterpillar pigment variation in nature

Abstract1. Insect colour patterns serve a wide range of ecological functions and the biotic and abiotic factors mediating colour variation in nature have been well characterised.2. Nonetheless, the majority of studies in this field have focused on adult insects (particularly butterflies). Almost nothing is known about the factors that mediate intra‐specific colour variation in juveniles in nature, even though they are often as conspicuously coloured as their adult counterparts.3. Here we show that temperature predicts a small but significant amount of monarch (Danaus plexippus) caterpillar pigment variation in nature. Over a 650,000‐km2 region in Canada and the USA, caterpillars found in warmer locations or lower latitudes had thinner black stripes than those found in colder locations or higher latitudes. Caterpillars have also become less black over the last five years, a result consistent with observed short‐term increases in summer temperature in this region.4. Our study demonstrates that the relationship between temperature and monarch caterpillar pigmentation seen in laboratory settings is also apparent in nature, although with considerable variation. Our study also highlights the utility of online biodiversity repositories such as iNaturalist for characterising pattern and colour variation in nature.

Constrained Imitation Learning for a Flapping Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

This letter presents a data-driven optimal control policy for a micro flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. First, a set of optimal trajectories are computed off-line based on a geometric formulation of dynamics that captures the nonlinear coupling between the large angle flapping motion and the quasi-steady aerodynamics. Then, it is transformed into a feedback control system according to the framework of imitation learning. In particular, an additional constraint is incorporated through the learning process to enhance the stability properties of the resulting controlled dynamics. Compared with conventional methods, the proposed constrained imitation learning eliminates the need to generate additional optimal trajectories on-line, without sacrificing stability. As such, the computational efficiency is substantially improved. Furthermore, this establishes the first nonlinear control system that stabilizes the coupled longitudinal and lateral dynamics of flapping wing aerial vehicle without relying on averaging or linearization. These are illustrated by numerical examples for a simulated model inspired by Monarch butterflies.

Using ecosystem services to identify inequitable outcomes in migratory species conservation

AbstractBiodiversity conservation efforts have been criticized for generating inequitable socio‐economic outcomes. These equity challenges are largely analyzed as place‐based problems affecting local communities directly impacted by conservation programs. The conservation of migratory species extends this problem geographically since people in one place may benefit while those in another bear the costs of conservation. The spatial subsidies approach offers an effective tool for analyzing such relationships between places connected by migratory species. Designed to quantify ecosystem services provided and received in specific locations across a migratory species’ range—and the disparities between them—the spatial subsidies approach highlights three axes of inequity: between indigenous and settler colonial societies, between urban and rural populations, and between the Global North and Global South. Recognizing these relationships is critical to achieving two mutually reinforcing policy goals: avoiding inequitable conservation outcomes in efforts to conserve migratory species, and ensuring effective long‐term conservation of migratory species. In demonstrating how the spatial subsidies approach enables the identification and quantification of inequities involving three migratory species (northern pintail ducks, monarch butterflies, and Mexican free‐tailed bats), we argue that a spatial subsidies approach could apply to migratory species conservation efforts worldwide under the context of “payments for ecosystem services.”

Forest land-cover trends in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, 1994–2017

SummaryThe hibernation sites of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus, L.) were discovered in central Mexico in 1975 and, following the decree of a protected area in 1986, processes of deforestation and forest degradation were triggered on the socially owned land in question. Further deterioration has occurred since the expansion and designation of the area as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in 2000. An innovative programme of economic incentives was established to compensate the affected properties in the core zone for curtailment of their forest use and to pay for environmental services; however, some of the agrarian communities were in disagreement with this programme. Orthophotographs from 1994 were compared with high-resolution satellite images from 2017 in order to determine forest-cover trends in the areas incentivized by Payment for Environmental Services to avoid deforestation and those areas that were not incentivized. The results show an overall recovery of 2% in forest area between 1994 and 2017, while a 5% increase in the deforested area is notable in the core zone. The findings indicate that, for the establishment of an effective protected area on social property lands, consensus must be achieved across all of the communities in order to avoid subsequent forest loss.

The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes by Lynne Heasley

Reviewed by: The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes by Lynne Heasley Nicholas Cunigan Lynne Heasley. The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2021. Pp. 264. Black and white illustrations. Index. Notes. Paperback: $27.95. Lynne Heasley beckons the reader of The Accidental Reef to see the Great Lakes through a kaleidoscope. And through her kaleidoscopic vision, the world of the Great Lakes is reflected and refracted through stories of evolution, biology, geology, ichthyology, etymology, walleye taxonomy, scuba divers, and more. This is not simply a case in interdisciplinary research. Heasley is calling out the compartmentalization of higher education, and her work illustrates what can be achieved when one practices what they preach. (30–31) [End Page 118] Heasley blends art, science, and history to illuminate what she refers to as the “accidental reef.” This reef—located in the St. Clair River, which flows from Lake Huron into Lake St. Clair and forms part of the international border between Michigan and Ottawa, Canada—formed as an “accident of history and ecology” when steamships dumped their coal waste into the river and created a spawning reef for lake sturgeon. (x) In vivid, poetic, and often humorous prose, Heasley tells the stories of the lives lived on and in the St. Clair River. She weaves together a menagerie of stories ranging from industrial pollution, the deep history of zebra mussels, the sex lives of sturgeon, and the lost lures of fishers recovered by an intrepid scuba diver seeking to restore broken relationships both in and out of the water. All this reimagining, though, is not without purpose. These seemingly random anecdotes are deeply intertwined. Heasley is arguing through these stories that the “care and protection of the Great Lakes demands different ways of seeing and knowing.” (ix) Heasley joins a growing cadre of historians and reporters (such as Nancy Langston in Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World and Dan Egan in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes) who are plying the depths, shallows, and shores of the Great Lakes to reveal the troubled past of these waters in hopes of ensuring the lakes a better future. Heasley is making important points about the region’s past, including the exploitation of both the Great Lakes’ natural resources as well as cultural knowledge that has been appropriated through extractive biocolonialism. Her most poignant contribution, though, might be in her account of the Great Lakes’ “paradox of abundance;” the Great Lakes are filled with North America’s largest supply of freshwater and are home to the world’s largest lake. This abundance, Heasley cautions, should not be taken for granted. The histories of bison, passenger pigeons, and monarch butterflies show that abundance often give humans a false sense of inexhaustibility. And as climate change is projected to dry out the American West and extend in time and space the current megadrought, the seemingly inexhaustible Great Lakes might be tapped to quench America’s thirst. This warning makes Heasley’s contribution more than a regional history of a forty-mile-long river and the industries, businesses, tribes, and individuals who rely upon it. Instead, Heasley’s work is a lighthouse—warning all those who rely on the steady supply of freshwater that we are too close to shore and without immediate action, we risk crashing into it. [End Page 119] Nicholas Cunigan Calvin University Copyright © 2022 Historical Society of Michigan

Milkweed plants bought at nurseries may expose monarch caterpillars to harmful pesticide residues

The decline of monarch butterflies in both the eastern and western United States has garnered widespread public interest. Planting milkweeds, their larval host plants, has been promoted as one action individuals can take, but little is known with respect to potential pesticide contamination of store-bought milkweeds. In this study, we collected leaf samples from 235 milkweed plants purchased at 33 retail nurseries across the US to screen for pesticides. Across all samples, we detected 61 different pesticides with an average of 12.2 (±5.0) compounds per plant. While only 9 of these compounds have been experimentally tested on monarch caterpillars, 38 % of samples contained a pesticide above a concentration shown to have a sub-lethal effect for monarchs. We detected only a modest predictive ability of retailer size and milkweed species; and plants with labels advertising their value for wildlife did not have fewer pesticides at concentrations known to have a negative effect on monarchs. These results demonstrate the extensiveness of pesticide exposure within nursery milkweeds and the potential impacts on monarchs and other insects exposed to store-bought plants.

Multi-season climate projections forecast declines in migratory monarch butterflies.

Climate change poses a unique threat to migratory species as it has the potential to alter environmental conditions at multiple points along a species' migratory route. The eastern migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) has declined markedly over the last few decades, in part due to variation in breeding-season climate. Here, we combined a retrospective, annual-cycle model for the eastern monarch population with climate projections within the spring breeding grounds in eastern Texas and across the summer breeding grounds in the midwestern U.S. and southern Ontario, Canada to evaluate how monarchs are likely to respond to climate change over the next century. Our results reveal that projected changes in breeding-season climate are likely to lead to decreases in monarch abundance, with high potential for overwintering population size to fall below the historical minimum three or more times in the next two decades. Climatic changes across the expansive summer breeding grounds will also cause shifts in the distribution of monarchs, with higher projected abundances in areas that become wetter but not appreciably hotter (e.g., northern Ohio) and declines in abundance where summer temperatures are projected to increase well above those observed in the recent past (e.g., northern Minnesota). Although climate uncertainties dominate long-term population forecasts, our analyses suggest that we can improve precision of near-term forecasts by collecting targeted data to better understand relationships between breeding-season climate variables and local monarch abundance. Overall, our results highlight the importance of accounting for the impacts of climate changes throughout the full-annual cycle of migratory species.

Eastern monarch larval performance may not be affected by shifts in phenological synchrony with milkweed.

Interacting species are experiencing disruptions in the relative timing of their key life‐history events due to climate change. These shifts can sometimes be detrimental to the fitness of the consumer in trophic interactions but not always.The potential consequences of phenological asynchrony for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and its host plant (Asclepias spp.) have not been well‐studied. Given that plants generally undergo seasonal declines in quality, if climate change delays the timing of the larval stage relative to the availability of younger milkweed plants, monarch performance could be negatively affected.Here, we explore the potential consequences for the eastern monarch population due to probable asynchrony with milkweed. We used field surveys around Ottawa, Canada, to determine monarch oviposition preference on common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) plants and the seasonal availability of these plants. To determine the potential fitness consequences when females oviposit on nonpreferred plants, we conducted a field experiment to assess the effect of milkweed size on monarch larval performance (e.g., development time and final size).Preferred oviposition plants (earlier stages of development and better condition) were consistently available in large proportion over the summer season. We also found that declines in leaf quality (more latex and thicker leaves) with plant size did not translate into decreases in larval performance.Our results suggest that even if asynchrony of the monarch–milkweed interaction occurs due to climate change, the larval stage of the eastern monarch may not face negative consequences. Future studies should determine how the relative timing of the interaction will change in the region.

Pollinator Species at Risk from the Expansion of Avocado Monoculture in Central Mexico

The monoculture of avocado (Persea americana) has triggered the loss of large forested areas in central Mexico, including the habitat of threatened species. This study assessed the potential habitat loss of ten threatened pollinator species due to the expansion of avocado monoculture in Mexico. First, we modeled the distribution of avocado and pollinators. Then, we overlapped their suitable areas at a national level and within the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB). We also identified the areas with more affected pollinators and coinciding with protected areas. As a result, 78% of the suitable areas for avocado coincided with the distribution of at least one pollinator. Although only two pollinators lost more than one-fifth of their distribution at a national level, the habitat loss increased to 41.6% on average, considering their distribution within the TMVB. The most affected pollinators were Bombus brachycephalus, B diligens, Danaus plexippus, and Tilmatura dupontii, losing more than 48% of their distribution within this ecoregion. The areas with a greater number of affected species pollinators were found in the states of Michoacán, Mexico, and Morelos, where most of the area is currently unprotected. Our results suggest that the expansion of the avocado monoculture will negatively affect the habitat of threatened pollinators in Mexico.

Investing in monarch conservation: understanding private funding dynamics

Non-profit environmental organizations (NGOs) rely heavily on external donors to fulfill their mandates. However, forecasting donations for long-term planning is an elusive task at best. The non-compulsory nature of donation requires NGOs to understand how donors’ attention and funding allocations change over time as conservation scenarios change and incorporate these insights into their budgeting plans. We hypothesize that an NGO can hinder its capacity to reach its conservation goals by neglecting its donor-NGO-natural system (DNNS), which is reactive to the socio-ecological context. To test our hypothesis, we compared the ecological outcomes derived from a budgeting strategy assuming donors have a fixed willingness to pay throughout the program (open-loop) against the reality that donor preferences change over time (closed-loop) based on the evolving ecological context, partly driven by the program’s actions. Our analysis was performed using two different willingness to pay (WTP) behavioural models, one representing donors informed about the success of the program supported (GPI), and another without such information (GPI), evidencing how the underlying assumptions about the target donors can radically change the organization’s fundraising strategy. Next, we used our closed-loop approach to estimate NGO’s optimal yearly donation requests to achieve a conservation target. Finally, we tested the consequences of presuming an incorrect WTP behavioural model while estimating optimal yearly donation requests by applying the optimization results from the previous step into a model parameterized with a different behavioural model. Our model was created by coupling a discrete choice experiment (DCE) and a systems dynamics model, developing a coupled social-ecological model of the eastern Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), a charismatic long-distant migrant butterfly that has dwindled in numbers across North America mainly due to the increases in GMO agriculture. Our results showed a significant difference in donations received and ecological outcome forecasted by an open-loop model and the actual numbers obtained by the more real-life, closed-loop model, highlighting the importance of accounting for human behaviour during the planning phase of a long-term conservation strategy. Next, when we used our closed-loop to estimate optimal donation requests, the conservation objectives and funds raised were consistently and efficiently achieved, regardless of the underlying behavioural WTP model. We also designed novel visual tools from the behaviour WTP model exploration to bridge the gap between science insights obtained from DCEs and decision-making. However, when we used closed-loop optimal donation requests obtained from one WTP behaviour model into a simulation parameterized with different WTP behavioural models, considerable ecological and financial targets deviations arose. These deviations highlight the importance of acknowledging the dynamic nature of donor’s behaviour and the need to thoroughly characterize such behaviour. Finally, we introduce a novel forecasting tool that conservation managers will have at their disposal to improve the accuracy of their budget forecasting and, ultimately, increase the program’s success rate.