Captive-reared migratory monarch butterflies show natural orientation when released in the wild
Wilcox AAE, Newman AEM, Raine NE and others. Conservation physiology, May 2021.
Read the paper Free to read · doi:10.1093/conphys/coab032
What this paper is about
Tens of thousands of people rear monarchs indoors each year, and earlier work suggested captive-reared butterflies lose the ability to orient south.
The authors raised offspring of wild-caught monarchs and released them. They oriented normally, which contradicts the earlier finding and matters for whether the practice should be discouraged.
Summarised here from the abstract below. Not the authors’ words.
Abstract
Eastern North American migratory monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have faced sharp declines over the past two decades. Captive rearing of monarch butterflies is a popular and widely used approach for both public education and conservation. However, recent evidence suggests that captive-reared monarchs may lose their capacity to orient southward during fall migration to their Mexican overwintering sites, raising questions about the value and ethics of this activity undertaken by tens of thousands of North American citizens, educators, volunteers and conservationists each year. We raised offspring of wild-caught monarchs on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) indoors at 29°C during the day and 23°C at night (~77% RH, 18L:6D), and after eclosion, individuals were either tested in a flight simulator or radio tracked in the wild using an array of automated telemetry towers. While 26% (10/39) of monarchs tested in the flight simulator showed a weakly concentrated southward orientation, 97% (28/29) of the radio-tracked individuals that could be reliably detected by automated towers flew in a south to southeast direction from the release site and were detected at distances of up to 200 km away. Our results suggest that, although captive rearing of monarch butterflies may cause temporary disorientation, proper orientation is likely established after exposure to natural skylight cues.
Abstract reproduced from the published paper, which is licensed CC BY. Copyright remains with the authors.
Key terms
Milkweeds in this paper
- Swamp Milkweed Asclepias incarnata
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title = {Captive-reared migratory monarch butterflies show natural orientation when released in the wild (listing)},
author = {{Milkweed USA}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://milkweedusa.com/research/captive-reared-migratory-monarch-butterflies-show-natural-orientation-when-2021/},
note = {Accessed DATE}
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