Monarch Wing Size Evolution

[Lee Hurrell]

A friend at work sent me this link to an interesting article about the wing size of Monarchs that migrate being much larger than those that do not.

It also has a link to that wonderful scene from Life too!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_ne ... 481380.stm

Cheers

Lee

[Dave McCormick]

Thanks for the link Lee, thats quite interesting, never knew of the smaller monarchs. Wonder if that could been the same for the Painted Ladies last year? The ones that appeared here first in late spring had longer wings but the first generation to be born from eggs laid here had I noticed, bit smaller wings as they didn't go anywhere, they laid eggs again and the next generation I think could have been the ones ready to leave and they looked like they had slightly longer wings, which after reading the monarch link, makes sense as they had to fly the long distances through Europe again, as although quite a few didn't leave, many more did.