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donesia, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Great Britain, and the Mediterranean.
• On Hawaii, there are even white monarchs. Birds on this island are unaffected by the poisons in normal monarchs, and so the monarchs have evolved away from the bright orange colors that flagrantly warn predators of their toxicity.
• To the best of our knowledge, many of the monarch populations established in the Pacific during the middle 1800s (although the Maori have a vernacular name for the monarch, suggesting it has been in New Zealand for longer). But while it isn't entirely clear how they got so far from their TRUE homes, there are a few thoughts.
• Monarchs are migrators- we established this earlier- and feasibly could have blown from island to island across the Pacific to reach Australia and eventually even to India with little help from man.
• Also, reports document that monarchs will alight on ships in the middle of the ocean (hundreds of miles from shore). Once on board, these stowaways wisely stay put until they reach some new land mass.
• When in doubt, blame the French. An early French entomologist in the region, Pere Montrouzieri explained in his notebooks that he moved some monarchs around to at least a few of the Pacific islands.
• But once there, these insects would have starved.
• Larvae of monarchs eat one thing: milkweed (plants in the genus Asclepias). So establishment of monarchs to distant lands was contingent on the availability of milkweeds in the new region. European colonists were renowned for moving familiar plants to their new homes, and this might explain why monarchs only established later in history.
• My first inclination was to lash out at monarchs for betraying the investment of our love and attention. But I guess that the monarch's moving on is for the best given our recent behaviors toward them.
• The Mexicans have been chopping down the forests where monarchs overwinter. And our growing use of agrichemicals (herbicides that kill milkweeds, and insecticides that kill the monarchs themselves) are making life really difficult for our butterfly mascot here in their homeland. Indeed, monarch populations in this country have dropped off dramatically- they are down 60% this year. This trend is more than alarming (and it isn't reserved to only monarchs. Look at honeybees).
• If we can't take care of OUR insect, then maybe I guess I can't blame them for wanting to see other countries.