Danaus Plexipus

The monarch butterfly, as known as Danaus plexippus, is often called the milkweed butterfly because its larvae eat the milkweed plant. They are also sometimes called "royalty butterflies" because their family name comes from the daughter of Danaus, ruler of Argos. There are many other interesting facts about this butterfly including its anatomy and life cycle, where the butterfly lies on the food chain, the migration from Canada to Mexico, why the butterfly is being threatened, and lastly, what is being done to help the butterfly.

     The monarch butterfly, as known as Danaus plexippus, is often called the milkweed butterfly because its larvae eat the milkweed plant. They are also sometimes called "royalty butterflies" because their family name comes from the daughter of Danaus, ruler of Argos. There are many other interesting facts about this butterfly including its anatomy and life cycle, where the butterfly lies on the food chain, the migration from Canada to Mexico, why the butterfly is being threatened, and lastly, what is being done to help the butterfly.

The Monarch Butterfly is a milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. It’s the most common butterfly in North America , and is considered an “iconic pollinator species”.(Conserving Monarch butterflies And their habitats).The Monarch Butterflies have many nicknames such as, “milkweed, common tiger, wanderer and black veined brown”(Danaus).

The monarch butterfly is a milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. It’s like the king of all butterflies. They all carry a proboscis that gets nutrients from plants. Their scientific name is Danaus Plexippus. To them we are predators. Monarchs are found all over North America. New Zealand, Australia , and the Canary Islands( Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly.)

I enjoyed my many years of participation in the Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project. Milkweed is the larvae's host plant. Unfortunately common milkweed (asclepias syriaca) has not done well

As deforestation began to take place at the low elevation levels in the hawaiian forests, the honeycreepers were forced to move to higher ground, in hawaii there has been found to be a threshold temperature where the plasmodium development in mosquitoes cannot developpe to the stage of becoming infective, that threshold (11,12 degrees celsius) with the increase of climate change mosquitoes will be able to slowly rise up to high elevation areas where the honeycreepers take refuge, spreading more diseases and shrinking the entire hawaiian bird population. Researches have concluded that increased temperatures in the future will affect the entire ecosystem of hawaii and many other areas, without human intervention many of the biodiversity along the hawaiian islands may cease to exist or have rapid, steady declines. There is still a chance that the Hawaiian Honeycreeper and other birds alike will be able to sustain their species, if land managers can help create more habitats for the birds or help improve the forests they have now. Reducing mosquito population by trying to eliminate breeding sites, and controlling the predator amount for the Hawaiian honeycreepers. These Hawaiian birds can be found nowhere else in the world, and are seen as part of the culture; The honeycreepers play a very big role in pollination throughout the forest and help keep the forest diversity

The monarch butterfly travels long distances to get to their nesting grounds. The monarch’s migration takes a total of 3000 miles. Their nesting grounds is located in the Sierra

Deep in the west coast rainforest there is an endangered species called The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. They are 30-33 cm amphibious, that scout their lives through touch and sight. The Tree Octopus spends the beginning of its life in the rainforest. The rainforest has so much drizzle and dew, it keeps the threatened species from becoming shriveled and dead. The exceptional and profound creature has a very large brain to body ratio.

It then discusses the decreasing in Mexican overwintering populations and the decreases of milkweed. In the introduction they link the increasing use of “glyphosate herbicide increased in conjunction with the increased adoption of glyphosate-tolerant corn and soybeans,” (10) to the decreasing amounts of milkweed. They then present one of the problems which faced they was how to monitor the population of monarch butterflies. They show the advantages and disadvantages of two different methods already being used. These are as follows: tagging adult monarchs and counting migrating monarchs in areas where they become concentrated. However, these techniques are not being used to count monarchs in the Midwest so they decided to determine the destiny of monarch eggs on milkweed in a variety of different patches. They then used the amount of eggs per plant to determine “the effect of milkweed resource limitation on monarch production,”

Migration-Monarchs spend their winter hibernation in mexico and southern california where it is hot all year long because their fragile bodies can’t withstand the cold.Also, the larval food plants do not grow in their winter overwintering sites, so the spring generation must fly back north to places where the plants are plentiful.

Additionally, the Callinectes sapidus, otherwise known as the blue crab is another native species of the Chesapeake bay. It's decline has been quite evident to the bay and has many effects. With the oysters in the bay, the crab population had been cut by half, from 1980-1990, to 300 million. In 2008, it was reported that the population was declining by 70%. It was quite evident to the researchers that the blue crab population was decreasing due to poor water

Bombus norvegicus, the bumblebee, is a social parasite that invades the nest of the species Bombus hypnorum. Females of B. norvegicus enter the nest of B. hypnorum and take the place of the former queen of the nest so that the workers of the host nest can rear the offspring of B. norvegicus. Females of B. norvegicus lack the necessary biological tools to rear offspring on their own and rely solely on invading another species’ nest in order to do so. In order to invade the host nest, B. norvegicus must use a variety of different mechanisms to enter the host nest and bypass their defense system as well as remain inside of the host nest permanently. One such way to do this is to employ the use of offensive chemicals that are able to influence the behavior of the host workers.

The Oregon silverspot butterfly requires a very specific habitat for their survival, particularly for the survival of their larvae. The larvae of the Oregon silverspot butterfly only feed on the hookedspur violet (Viola adunca) and therefore, can only thrive and mature to adulthood in an ecosystem in which conditions are ideal for the growth of this angiosperm.

The Plakobranchus ocellatus feeds on great variety of green algae (Christa et al. 2012) they are known to sequester ingested plastids (kleptoplasts) within specialized cells of the digestive gland, and are said to have a long-term retention (LtR) form that incorporates chloroplasts for several months and thus allowing them to undergo periods of starvation while continuing photosynthetic activity. Not much is known about the food sources of this sacoglossan, but it is suggested that P. ocellatus is a species complex and feeds on a broad variety of Ulvophyceae (Christa, Wescott L, et al 2013)

1098/RSBL.2010.0053). After the observations and recordings were gathered, the pair set eggs of the butterfly, Heteronympha metope, in chambers where the temperature could be controlled and found the caterpillar pupates prior and the butterfly sooner in hotter than ordinary conditions. The pairs then made a numerical model joining these physiological impacts of temperature with atmosphere information. The development dates figured by the model co-ordinated the verifiable records, firmly recommended that a global warming alteration has driven the adjustments in rise timing. “The rise in air temperate links to the butterfly emergence in a cause-and -effect pattern” (Michael Kearney and Natalie Briscoe,