Animal Migrations: Endangered Phenomena

Abstract

Current conservation research focuses on diminishing species diversity, minimal viable populations, and on the successive demise of habitats and populations that leads species to extinction. In this paper we utilize the monarch butterfly's remarkable migration and overwintering biology as a paradigm of a new conservation theme: endangered phenomenon. An endangered phenomenon is a spectacular aspect of the life history of an animal or plant species involving a large number of individuals that is threatened with impoverishment or demise; the species per se need not be in peril, rather, the phenomenon it exhibits is at stake. We envision the near future with increasing numbers of species reduced in range and so constrained in numbers that they can no longer exhibit these characteristic spectacles.