Just a couple pieces of interesting news that I don’t think I have posted before.
Did you know Butterflies live on the Space Station? Well they don’t yet, but they will (hopefully). On the Shuttle that launched on Monday, November 16, 2009, they took two types of Butterfly Caterpillars to be dropped off at the Space Station; Painted Lady’s and Monarchs. NASA had previously tried to do the same experiment a year ago but the experiment ultimately failed as they didn’t develop past the larvae stage because of bad food. Let’s hope they have better luck this time!
Even more exciting news, at least for me. I didn’t realize this research was in part sponsored by Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. They even have some live streaming video that you can watch of the Caterpillars that is based right at Baylor College of Medicine!
You can read more details about this project by going to Discovery News.
Another little bit of interesting news regarding Monarch Butterflies. Did you know that Female Monarchs are declining? Me neither, but apparently they are. In the last 30 years Female Monarchs have been declining from 53% to 43% in the overwintering site in Mexico. The researcher hypothesized three possibilities for this trend.
- Because of the large increase in tropical milkweed in the US, and because of how this milkweed doesn’t die in the winter, it could be that female Monarchs are migrating less and decreasing their egg production. Thus, because more milkweed is available when it typically shouldn’t be, the female Monarchs are doing their normal evolution.
- The second hypothesis relates to global climate change. In this scenario, could it be that the female Monarchs aren’t migrating to Mexico because of the warmer temperatures and just staying where they are to lay their eggs?
- The third hypothesis is that the OE (Ophryocystis Elektroscirrha) (search for Monarch Diseases on my blog) is killing the females faster than the males.
All three of these hypotheses make perfect sense to me. Heck, we’ve got quite a few Monarch Caterpillars right now in the garden and I would think they would have already migrated in previous years.
Anyway, you can read about this particular bit of research by clicking here.
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by texdr
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