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Towards Quantifying Relevant Land Cover Change: A Case Study In The Central Flyway Of The Monarch Butterfly, Hanna Lenee Ford
Towards Quantifying Relevant Land Cover Change: A Case Study In The Central Flyway Of The Monarch Butterfly, Hanna Lenee Ford
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Over the past 20 years notable decreases in monarch butterfly populations have led researchers to begin evaluating the landscape for changes and seeking out opportunities for enacting conservation programs to better support their survival. The monarch butterfly has recently come under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act which has created a need for a more informed view of the landscape through which the migrate and breed, the central United States. In this research three spatially-explicit models are explored using the most applicable datasets currently available to address pressing policy and land manager decisions regarding monarch butterfly and pollinator …
A Periodic Matrix Population Model For Monarch Butterflies, Emily Hunt
A Periodic Matrix Population Model For Monarch Butterflies, Emily Hunt
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
The migration pattern of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) consists of a sequence of generations of butterflies that originate in Michoacan, Mexico each spring, travel as far north as Southern Canada, and ultimately return to the original location in Mexico the following fall. We use periodic population matrices to model the life cycle of the eastern monarch butterfly and find that, under this model, this migration is not currently at risk. We extend the model to address the three primary obstacles for the long-term survival of this migratory pattern: deforestation in Mexico, increased extreme weather patterns, and milkweed degradation.