Monarchs not endangered (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Saturday, February 21, 2015, 14:15 (3562 days ago)
There are all over the world and migrate everywhere. Money is wasted on them, when rarer butterflies are not helped.:-http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-monarch-butterfly-doesnt-need-so-much-help/2015/02/20/cd936d60-b887-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1-"It's true that monarch populations in eastern North America are down about 90 percent in the past 20 years — a serious decline. Monarch watchers across the country report far fewer sightings than in the past. So why not list the species?- "To begin, the overwintering population in Mexico still totals more than 30 million. Most insect conservationists would be thrilled to record numbers even a tenth of that for many rare species around the country. And that total doesn't include the millions of monarchs in populations wintering in California, or those that live year-round in Central America and the Caribbean, or the introduced populations thriving across the Pacific islands and in Australia.-- "The monarch is one of the most widespread species of butterfly in the world. Its ability to find and colonize even isolated patches of milkweed — the host plant for their larvae — is renowned."
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 00:00 (1977 days ago) @ David Turell
If monarch eggs are incyb ated and raised in captivity, they lose the drive to migrate:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190624161141.htm
" Monarch butterflies purchased from a commercial breeder did not fly in a southward direction, even in offspring raised outdoors, in a new study conducted by scientists at the University of Chicago. Wild-caught monarchs bred indoors under simulated outdoor conditions also did not orient south, suggesting that captive breeding disrupts the monarch's famous annual migratory behavior.
***
"Monarchs breed during the summer and autumn, the autumn generation being the one that migrates. Tenger-Trolander collected eggs from the commercially purchased adults after they mated and raised them to adult butterflies. That summer generation then became the parents of the autumn generation.
"Tenger-Trolander then tested this autumn generation in a "flight simulator" to see the predominant direction they fly. The simulator is an open-ended, metal cylinder, like a pipe standing on one end. The butterfly is connected to a rod near the top opening of the cylinder by a metal pin, or tether, attached to its abdomen. This makes the butterflies fly in place inside the cylinder, but they are free to rotate 360 degrees. The rotating dial records the direction of the butterfly every two milliseconds and saves the data to a computer.
"Butterflies that exhibit migratory behavior should fly predominantly toward the south inside this flight simulator. The locally-captured monarchs raised in the same gardens did just that. However, Tenger-Trolander saw that the generation of butterflies bred from the commercial monarchs didn't fly in a dominant direction.
" Tenger-Trolander also performed a second set of experiments starting with only wild-caught monarchs and rearing the offspring completely inside. She tried to mimic outdoor conditions by adjusting temperature and the hours of daylight, but as a group, these butterflies did not show signs of migratory flight either. Some individuals did fly pointing south, but as a group they did not collectively fly predominantly in a southward direction. In fact, taking a chrysalis that had been developing outdoors and bringing it inside just as it was about to emerge also "broke" the migratory behavior in the group as a whole.
***
"'We can't point to a single genetic change that did it because there are lots of them," he said. "But we think somewhere buried in the genome are changes that have broken it.'"
Comment: Despite not findings genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
by David Turell , Wednesday, June 26, 2019, 15:01 (1976 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
dhw: I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
dhw: I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
by David Turell , Thursday, June 27, 2019, 15:27 (1975 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
dhw: I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
dhw: I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
DAVID: I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.
But do you believe that flippers were a totally new invention, or do you believe that pre-whale legs turned into flippers when pre-whales adapted to life in the water?
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
by David Turell , Friday, June 28, 2019, 15:46 (1974 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Despite not finding genetic changes, this suggests that there are epigenetic influences of some sort, and that normally living monarchs contain instructions they must follow.
dhw: I would suggest that this suggests that epigenetic influences were the original spur to the pattern of migration, and when the environment was changed, the monarch changed its responses accordingly. Once a system is successful, it is passed on and will survive until conditions change. Then the organism will either change to fit in with new conditions, or it will perish. The process is known as evolution.
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
DAVID: I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.
dhw: But do you believe that flippers were a totally new invention, or do you believe that pre-whale legs turned into flippers when pre-whales adapted to life in the water?
Flippers were a major reformation of a body part, requiring design to adapt to newly requirements for different movement in water rather than on land.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
DAVID: I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.
dhw: But do you believe that flippers were a totally new invention, or do you believe that pre-whale legs turned into flippers when pre-whales adapted to life in the water?
DAVID: Flippers were a major reformation of a body part, requiring design to adapt to newly requirements for different movement in water rather than on land.
Thank you for confirming what I wrote above. A major reformation of an existing body part is not an innovation (totally new invention) but an adaptation, and I agree that this adaptation requires design, and as you know, I propose that the designing mechanism is the (perhaps God-given) autonomous intelligence of the pre-whale’s cell communities.
DAVID (Under “triple symbiosis”): Once again it is difficult to understand how chance evolution could create this scenario. How did the slug learn to detoxify the poisons in the first place? And the algae had the same problem when they got together with the bacterium.
An obvious answer is that all these organisms have their own form of intelligence. I find it hard to believe that your God, whose only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, would have personally dabbled this symbiosis, or would have preprogrammed the very first cells to pass the information on to slugs and algae and bacteria.
DAVID (Under “Bacterial motors”): These studies raise the issue of just how complex was original life if it started with so-called simple bacteria. Perhaps not so simple and required a designer.
Of course they are not simple, and I agree that their complexity provides a strong case for design. Many scientists believe that bacteria are intelligent beings in their own right, and not just simple automatons obeying instructions.
Monarchs in captivity do not migrate
by David Turell , Saturday, June 29, 2019, 22:17 (1973 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: Have you forgotten that evolution requires speciation? This is simply adaptation.
dhw: Adaptation is not simple, but speciation is the great mystery of evolution which nobody has yet solved. My proposal is that the SAME mechanism responsible for adaptation is also responsible for innovation, and hence speciation. If cell communities are able to change their structures or behaviour in order to meet the requirements of new conditions, perhaps (it is a hypothesis) they are also able to exploit new conditions through innovation – but we cannot always draw a clear borderline between adaptation and innovation, as for instance with pre-whale legs that turn into flippers.
DAVID: I see a sharp demarcation most of time between adaptation, such as in monarchs in the same body form change an instinctual activity as migration, and marked change in form as in the whale.
dhw: But do you believe that flippers were a totally new invention, or do you believe that pre-whale legs turned into flippers when pre-whales adapted to life in the water?
DAVID: Flippers were a major reformation of a body part, requiring design to adapt to newly requirements for different movement in water rather than on land.
dhw: Thank you for confirming what I wrote above. A major reformation of an existing body part is not an innovation (totally new invention) but an adaptation, and I agree that this adaptation requires design, and as you know, I propose that the designing mechanism is the (perhaps God-given) autonomous intelligence of the pre-whale’s cell communities.
DAVID (Under “triple symbiosis”): Once again it is difficult to understand how chance evolution could create this scenario. How did the slug learn to detoxify the poisons in the first place? And the algae had the same problem when they got together with the bacterium.
dhw: An obvious answer is that all these organisms have their own form of intelligence. I find it hard to believe that your God, whose only purpose was to specially design H. sapiens, would have personally dabbled this symbiosis, or would have preprogrammed the very first cells to pass the information on to slugs and algae and bacteria.
DAVID (Under “Bacterial motors”): These studies raise the issue of just how complex was original life if it started with so-called simple bacteria. Perhaps not so simple and required a designer.
dhw: Of course they are not simple, and I agree that their complexity provides a strong case for design. Many scientists believe that bacteria are intelligent beings in their own right, and not just simple automatons obeying instructions.
Our differences remain he same.