Seasonal plasticity in morphology and metabolism differs between migratory North American and resident Costa Rican monarch butterflies.

ABSTRACT: Environmental heterogeneity in temperate latitudes is expected to maintain seasonally plastic life-history strategies that include the tuning of morphologies and metabolism that support overwintering. For species that have expanded their ranges into tropical latitudes, it is unclear the extent to which the capacity for plasticity will be maintained or will erode with disuse. The migratory generations of the North American (NA) monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus lead distinctly different lives from their summer generation NA parents and their tropical descendants living in Costa Rica (CR). NA migratory monarchs postpone reproduction, travel thousands of kilometers south to overwinter in Mexico, and subsist on little food for months. Whether recently dispersed populations of monarchs

SUBMITTER: Tenger-Trolander A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9943933 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature