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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Japanese Beetles’ Feeding On Milkweed Flowers May Compromise Efforts To Restore Monarch Butterfly Habitat, Adam M. Baker, Daniel A. Potter
Japanese Beetles’ Feeding On Milkweed Flowers May Compromise Efforts To Restore Monarch Butterfly Habitat, Adam M. Baker, Daniel A. Potter
Entomology Faculty Publications
The eastern North American migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) is in serious decline. Habitat restoration, including adding millions of host plants to compensate for loss of milkweed in US cropland, is a key part of the international conservation strategy to return this iconic butterfly to sustainable status. We report here that Popillia japonica, a polyphagous, invasive beetle, aggregates and feeds on flowers of Asclepias syriaca, the monarch’s most important larval food plant, reducing fruiting and seed set by >90% and extensively damaging milkweed umbels in the field. The beetle’s ongoing incursion into the monarch’s …
Habitat Selection And Con- And Heterospecific Associations Of Wintering Whooping Cranes At Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama, Andrew W. Cantrell, Yong Wang
Habitat Selection And Con- And Heterospecific Associations Of Wintering Whooping Cranes At Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama, Andrew W. Cantrell, Yong Wang
Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop
Winter ecology of the Eastern Migratory Population of whooping cranes (Grus americana) has received less detailed study than that of other life stages or the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Population. Increased winter use of novel sites by these cranes makes understanding the mechanisms contributing to habitat selection and use important for efficient conservation. As a subset of a larger and ongoing project, this study examined the individual and temporal variations of occupancy times, habitat types used, and co-occurrence with con- and heterospecifics during winters 2014-15 and 2015-16 at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama, while considering the effect of individual life …