Monarchs Take Generations to Make Annual South-North Journey
Credit: Katie Peek
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monarchs are on the move. The butterflies leave their dense winter clusters near Mexico City every year to head north. It will take four months and three generations to get there. The butterflies will be busy boosting their company once they arrive. The eastern monarch numbers have dropped 80 percent in the past 20 years because of habitat degradation. Momeni-Dehaghi used databases built by citizen scientists to identify where the overwintering generation hatch. The data could be used to develop more targeted interventions for a species in rapid decline.

Graphic shows number of recorded sightings of eastern monarch butterflies at various latitudes from May through July.
Credit: Katie Peek; Sources: Monarch Sightings from Journey North Citizen Science Data (journeynorth.org); Population Data from Columbia University’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)

The title of this article was originally published in Scientific American.

The scientificamerican0322-84 was published in the journal.

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