Monarch Butterflies Born In Captivity Have Trouble Migrating South, Study Says - https://www.npr.org/735389108

I had read another article like that, but I'm not taking it very serious. This was a commercially raised source, raised that way over many generations, so no way to know how raising random "wild" Monarch cats inside might result in nonmigratory Monarchs or not.

More info: https://www.sciencemag.org/new...

FWIW

But neither commercially sourced monarchs nor local individuals raised indoors did. They tended to head in random directions.

To see why the monarchs weren't trying to fly south, the researchers sequenced the DNA of some of the butterflies and compared it with the already-sequenced monarch genomes. They found many differences but did not pin down any particular gene. But even with the right genes, the local butterflies raised indoors couldn't head in the right direction; the researchers think that because outdoor-raised butterflies orient south, but ones raised indoors don't, the latter are not getting the environmental cues that would signal them to fly south, they report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I'm willing to keep an open mind. But I still haven't seen solid proof, and nothing I've seen so far on this has represented the kind of solid and comprehensive studies and research we need. Maybe I'll be able to track down the original research numbers, hopefully based on the scientific methods I was taught. I'm not sure how much research this is based on. I do understand the need to get the longer migrating type of Monarch some kind of legal protection. In the meantime, maybe those wishing to help those kind of Monarchs can use outdoor methods more while still protecting the eggs and caterpillars from predators to some degree. There are tents and sleeves made for raising caterpillars that can be used for that.

Thinking back to my several years of raising Monarchs......One of the hallmarks of releasing hand reared Monarchs is their orientation. With the migrating generation, it is strong and pronounced and homeward bound. They make a bee line out of town. Whereas with the generations pre migration the orientation upon release was up and into a sheltering tree. They might still be around a day or two later, in no hurry to leave the ample patch where a suitable mate might be found...

Early generations travel northward following milkweed emergence and bloom so why would they orient south?

How does one tell if a wild caught test Monarch is of the migrating generation?

Here in the Mid Atlantic we routinely have two generations of Monarchs about with some tail end of the migration emergers ready to fly late Oct early Nov. Where as up in Vermont for instance the generations have little overlap.

There is two migration parts, I think. One northward and the other southward. And yes...I noticed that they only mentioned the south-bound one, as if a new Monarch should never be headed north. I found a tiny Monarch caterpillar on a milkweed here this weekend. Still wondering about those rare occasional summer ones...why would the mama butterfly (never seen by me) even be in Texas this late? It's getting very hot now, but the egg-laying may have been around a time after some extreme storms passed through the area. I remember it was cool after those storms.

I raised captive monarchs and tagged them, my tagged monarchs traveled from New York to Mexico, they are able to migrate just fine.

Can't say that I've been through the literature that sparked this thread. That said, I raised months for decades. I started while an undergrad, then into grad school, then into my career as biologist. I'm not trying to apply my experience any broader that for my own efforts. That said, I can say without a doubt that even in my best efforts, I usually saw differences morphologically as well as mortality between quid caught and reared specimens. I never released reared individuals back into the wild. I realize others do. I do remember a fair amount of primary literature on the Caprice tearing and releases of painted lady butterflies for events. The cautions were first raised by geneticists.

Anyway, I don't captive raise anything any more. The most I'll do is protect a chrysalis or spider egg case. The chrysalis is very short term. I put Argiope cases in a critter keeper but leave them outside but under cover until around late April or May when I notice activity.

We plant heavily for monarchs in multiple smaller locations, manage for milkweed pests, and water, but after that, they're on their own. YMMV