Milkweed loss in agricultural fields because of herbicide use: effect on the monarch butterfly population

By John M. Pleasants, K. Oberhauser. 2013

447 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. 1. The size of the Mexican overwintering population of monarch butterflies has decreased over the last decade. Approximately half of these butterflies come from the U.S. Midwest where larvae feed on common milkweed. There has been a large decline in milkweed in agricultural fields in the Midwest over the last decade. This loss is coincident with the increased use of glyphosate herbicide in conjunction with increased planting of genetically modified (GM) glyphosate‐tolerant corn (maize) and soybeans (soya).

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86d0c20aeb51f4320b94d02f2739270537167307

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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Citations in the corpus

Dynamics and trends of overwintering colonies of the monarch butterfly in Mexico (2014, background): “Their offspring then move farther north into much of the eastern half of the United States and southern Canada, where they produce two or three more generations (Cockrell et al., 1993; Pleasants and Oberhauser, 2012).”
Immature Monarch Survival: Effects of Site Characteristics, Density, and Time (2015, background): “…with proximity to agricultural lands, if monarchs are affected by pesticide applications or other practices in these habitats, but 4) agricultural habitats could contain fewer predators and thus support higher survival, as suggested by Oberhauser et al. (2001) and Pleasants and Oberhauser (2013).”
Impacts of genetically engineered crops on pesticide use in the U.S. -- the first sixteen years (2012, background): “, a study in the American Midwest reported a 58% decline in milkweed and an 81% drop in monarch butterflies from 1999 to 2010 [40].”
The Monarch Butterfly through Time and Space: The Social Construction of an Icon (2015, background): “Here, the concern is over the effect of glyphosate on milkweed populations in agricultural fields, because milkweeds are the sole host plants for monarchs (Oberhauser et al. 2001, Pleasants and Oberhauser 2013, Flockhart et al. 2014).”
Trends in glyphosate herbicide use in the United States and globally (2016, background): “Environmental studies encompass possible glyphosate impacts on soil microbial communities and earthworms [56–58], monarch butterflies [59], crustaceans [60], and honeybees [61].”
Milkweed restoration in the Midwest for monarch butterfly recovery: estimates of milkweeds lost, milkweeds remaining and milkweeds that must be added to increase the monarch population (2017, methodology): “…could support, I used the highly significant functional relationship between each year’s Midwest monarch production (Production), using Iowa monarch production as a proxy, and the size of the subsequent overwintering population (OW hectares) (Pleasants & Oberhauser, 2013; Pleasants, 2015).”
A trans‐national monarch butterfly population model and implications for regional conservation priorities (2017, methodology): “For example, Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land could be improved by encouraging farmers to include forbs (including milkweed) in seed mixes for CRP and other farm conservation incentive programmes (Pleasants & Oberhauser, 2013).”
Predicting monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) movement and egg-laying with a spatially-explicit agent-based model: The role of monarch perceptual range and spatial memory (2018, background): “Because non-glyphosate resistant corn and soybean fields have a higher density of milkweed (Pleasants and Oberhauser, 2013), we randomly selected 12% of the corn and 4% of soybean fields as being planted with non-glyphosate resistant crops.”