{"id":156184,"date":"2024-10-18T05:13:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T05:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/18\/saving-mexicos-fir-forests-could-help-monarch-butterflies\/"},"modified":"2024-10-18T05:13:09","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T05:13:09","slug":"saving-mexicos-fir-forests-could-help-monarch-butterflies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/18\/saving-mexicos-fir-forests-could-help-monarch-butterflies\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Mexico\u2019s fir forests could help monarch butterflies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>An experiment to grow new forests in central Mexico offers hope that the crucial winter habitat for millions of migrating monarch butterflies could survive into the next century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When scientists decided to plant hundreds of baby oyamel fir trees (<em>Abies religiosa<\/em>) about 100 kilometers from their native habitat, they weren\u2019t sure how many trees would survive. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/forests-and-global-change\/articles\/10.3389\/ffgc.2024.1440517\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Today, most of the saplings are flourishing<\/a>, researchers report September 17 in <em>Frontiers in Forests and Global Change<\/em>. Even at an altitude of 3,800 meters, high above where the trees usually grow, almost 70 percent of the saplings survived at least three years.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-wrapper {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  background-image: url(\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/032624_sb_space-sugar_feat.jpg?w&#61;800&amp;ssl&#61;1\");\n  background-size: cover;\n  background-position: center center;\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  padding: 20px;\n  background:rgba(0,0,0, 0.5);\n  color: white;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion h2 {\n  color: white;\n}\n\np.has-text-align-center a {\n  color: white !important;\n  text-decoration: none;\n  font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"dynamic-wrapper\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div id=\"dynamic-conversion\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\"><strong>Tell us about your Science News experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Help us improve by taking our 15-question reader survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>While moving a whole forest may sound like a drastic measure, \u201cdesperate times call for desperate measures,\u201d says Karen Oberhauser, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison who wasn\u2019t involved in the research. \u201cIf we don\u2019t help organisms move around, you know, we\u2019re just going to lose a lot of ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each fall, after monarchs <em>(Danaus plexippus)<\/em> migrate from the milkweed-laden meadows of southern Canada to the mountains of central Mexico, they hibernate exclusively on the oyamel fir. Thousands might cluster on a single branch, causing it to droop under their collective weight. But the forests \u2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/worries-grow-over-monarch-butterflies\">the butterflies who hibernate within \u2014 are at risk<\/a> (<em>SN: 4\/4\/11). <\/em>Monarch butterfly populations continue to decline. And <a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.foreco.2012.03.004\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">climate change projections predict that oyamel fir will vanish almost entirely by 2090<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI know that this sounds crazy, but we need to move the forests to a higher elevation,\u201d says Cuauht\u00e9moc S\u00e1enz-Romero, a forest geneticist at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicol\u00e1s de Hidalgo in Morelia, Mexico. Oyamel fir, which grow from around 2,400 meters to 3,500 meters, need cold mountain air to survive. The high-elevation chill also works to slow the metabolism of butterflies, allowing them to survive the long winter. As central Mexico gets warmer, new generations of oyamel fir will likely creep higher up their native slopes. They could soon run out of mountain to climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>S\u00e1enz-Romero wants to move the trees to taller mountains, but he\u2019s aware that they won\u2019t get there by themselves. \u201cUnfortunately, the scene in <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, where the trees are walking toward battle\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s just fiction. It doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His team collected oyamel fir seeds from elevations between 3,100 meters and 3,500 meters inside the <a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/list\/1290\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve<\/a> in Michoac\u00e1n state and grew them temporarily in a tree nursery. Then, in partnership with the Indigenous community in Calimaya, the team planted around 960 trees at four different elevations in the community\u2019s forest on the Nevado de Toluca volcano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some seedlings were planted at 3,400 meters \u2014 similar to typical oyamel fir that live inside the butterfly preserve. But S\u00e1enz-Romero wanted to determine just how much altitude an oyamel could take. Other trees were planted higher, in colder climates, at 3,600, 3,800 and 4,000 meters above sea level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3145227\">Local foresters from the Indigenous community in Calimaya planted oyamel fir seedlings on the Nevado de Toluca volcano in central Mexico as part of an experiment to see if the trees crucial to monarch butterflies\u2019 survival can thrive in new locations. Here, the planters check on the small fir trees that were planted at 4,000 meters above sea level, higher than their normal habitat.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3145227\">Cuauht\u00e9moc S\u00e1enz-Romero\/UMSNH<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If the fir could take root at higher-than-normal elevations, the trees might thrive there in the future as temperatures warm, S\u00e1enz-Romero hoped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Three years post planting, the team found that young fir trees were smaller and shorter the higher they sat on Nevado de Toluca. Still, many made it past their first year, which can indicate long-term survival. On average, 80 percent of the seedlings that got moved to locations 2.3 degrees Celsius colder than their home regions, survived at least three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Turning the experiment into reality likely would face many hurdles, including getting community and government support. And even if the trees can survive longer term, another question remains: Will the monarch butterflies find them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the winter of 2023\u20132024, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldwildlife.org\/publications\/monarch-butterfly-survey-report-2023-2024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">some large colonies of monarchs didn\u2019t hibernate inside the borders<\/a> of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. They flew to other forests. \u201cMy guess is that monarchs are already searching for colder places,\u201d S\u00e1enz-Romero says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/mexicos-forests-monarch-butterflies\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An experiment to grow new forests in central Mexico offers hope that the crucial winter habitat for millions of migrating monarch butterflies could survive into the next century. When scientists decided to plant hundreds of baby oyamel fir trees (Abies religiosa) about 100 kilometers from their native habitat, they weren\u2019t sure how many trees would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/101724_sh_replanting-monarch-forests_inline.jpg?resize=680%2C510&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[43444,3931,3680,5733,2839,14192],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156186,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156184\/revisions\/156186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}