Female monarch butterflies have no trouble finding a mate – even when a parasite kills most of the males, new research shows.
Some females carry a parasite called Spiroplasma that kills all their male offspring, meaning highly infected populations have very few males.
But the new study – by the universities of Exeter, Rwanda and Edinburgh, and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund – found females mated about 1.5 times on average, regardless of how many males were around.
The male proportion dropped below 10% in some cases, but it appears the remaining hard-working males managed to breed with most of the available females.
10-20% of females remained unmated, only slightly higher than the expected average in a population with plenty of males (5-10%).
“It was an inspiring and powerful experience working along with an international team of experts and advancing our knowledge of monarchs, which will shape my future career path towards research-based conservation,” said first author Vincent Rutagarama, a student at the University of Rwanda.
Professor Richard ffrench-Constant, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said: “It seems that monarch butterflies are very good at finding each other and mating. The proportion of males in butterfly populations fluctuates through the year, but we found consistent evidence of female breeding success all year round.”
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Posted On: 17/04/2023