Toastier fall weather might cause migrating monarch butterflies to wing it and change their flight plans, starting the countdown toward death.
Eastern monarchs captured during their autumn migration and exposed to warm temperatures in the lab came out of their usual reproductive hiatus, evolutionary biologist Ken Fedorka and colleagues report August 12 in Royal Society Open Science. Breaking that hiatus means the butterflies will likely die sooner than they normally would.
“Once you decide to go reproductive, your clock starts ticking,” says Fedorka, of the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
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