John M Pleasants

Quasi-extinction risk and population targets for the Eastern, migratory population of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus)

The Eastern, migratory population of monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus), an iconic North American insect, has declined by ~80% over the last decade. The monarch’s multi-generational migration between overwintering grounds in central Mexico and the summer breeding grounds in the northern U.S. and southern Canada is celebrated in all three countries and creates shared management responsibilities across North America. Here we present a novel Bayesian multivariate auto-regressive state-space model to assess quasi-extinction risk and aid in the establishment of a target population size for monarch conservation planning. We find that, given a range of plausible quasi-extinction thresholds, the population has a substantial...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation

Code and data for 'Confirmation of a decline in the summer population of the monarch butterfly due to habitat loss'

This code describes graphical and analytical comparisons between monarch butterfly survey data collected during summer breeding, fall migration, and winter.

Categories: Data; Tags: Danaus plexippus, Ecology, Land Use Change, Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), All tags... Wildlife Biology, biota, citizen science, eastern North America, glyphosate, monarch butterfly, Fewer tags