The other day I was listening to an ABC show talking about the miracles of migration. Always we cut to a technical explanation of how animals navigate. Barely ever do we consider that it is part of nature. Why do we need to know how Monarch Butterflies can migrate 4,000 km each year? Does it really matter? What benefit is there to explaining the mechanism? Coevolution explains the mystery of animal migration. This obscure but obvious explanation even alters our perception of and attitudes to animals. It immediately makes them more relevant to landscapes and this is the missing link in conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More. Animals aren’t a curiosity to study they are a functioning part of millions-of-years-old landscapes.
I was reminded to write about this after seeing @evabishop on Twitter explain how birch trees coevolved with beavers. ‘It’s a great example of an ecosystem in balance’, she said. It’s so rare to hear anyone states this fact, albeit so obvious, to anyone who observes wild animals and their behaviour.
The realisation that ecosystems work only when animals are present, is essential, if our quest for scientific understanding is to be more than just academic.
💫 #BeaverCal #Advent DEC 10
— Eva Bishop 💙 🌎 (@evabishop) December 10, 2021
“Trees like this one coevolved with #beavers for millions of years & just keep sprouting back up to replace them. It’s a great example of an #ecosystem in balance.” @EmilyFairfax
Co-evolution timeframes blow my mind -how fast humans have trashed 🌎! pic.twitter.com/Vvkh4q4C0q
Why Monarch Butterflies migrate
Monarch Butterflies don’t know how to fly from place to place. They coevolved with the landscape over millions of years and move through it, for exactly the same reason a water molecule, flows down a valley.
On first consideration, you will probably think this a major leap in logic, but it’s not.
Evolution is a continuum from the beginning of the solar system to now. It began with molecules that formed proteins, that created self-replicating patterns that behaved ‘life-like’. This eventually led to increasing complexity under the enormous force of entropyThe degree of disorder or chaos in a system, most often used to describe thermodynamic energy but also used the behaviour of information. All else being equal, physics determines that all matter and energy moves towards chaos, therefore biological systems are in a continual state of battling against entropic forces in order to remain stable. The most stable ecosystem is More, resulting eventually in life we see today. It’s all driven by the Sun’s energyEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More. Culture, behaviour and migration are only extensions of an increasingly complex pattern of existence. The most likely to surviveDarwin’s theory how species are formed, where those that stand in closest competition with those undergoing beneficial modification and improvement, will go extinct faster. Natural selection is by survival of the likeliest, not survival of the fittest. The fittest are only likely to survive because they happen to be most suited to the environment into which they are born. The More are those that synchronise best with the surrounding environment.
When rain falls, it floods plains and forms rivers that carve out their own route following the line of least resistance. Water consistently flows from A to B until, millions of years later, a valley is formed.
Monarch Butterflies migrate predictably because they have created their own path over millions of years. They became the most likely species to survive because they could create energy that flowed through their surrounding habitat. Along the way they fed and were fed upon.
They contributed to the creation of an ecosystem for themselves in much the same way as water molecules erode a path through rock. The forces that shape these relationships are the same.
Migrating birds
Lots of animals migrate but birds are among the most conspicuous. The thing to remember is that most animals move and migrations aren’t always long distance. They can also be lots of animals moving a small distance. It’s the ability to transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More energy that makes us different from plants. By doing so, all animals together, created ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More that functioned perfectly for the rise humanity.
‘Ornithologists suspect bar-headed geese fly over Mt. Everest because they have been doing so since before it existed. When it began rising up from the land, some 60 million years ago, they simply moved upward with it’.
Coevolution and its implications for humanity
These processes develop over many millions of years, timescales far longer than any human can imagine. While it’s enlightening to learn about the mechanisms built into butterflies to help them navigate, it doesn’t answer the question, ‘why?’ Coevolution explains the mystery of animal migration. Migratory animals follow paths that were built, like a meandering river, over eons.
The consequence for humanity is this.
As we break ecosystem processes by altering weather, soil and deforesting landscapes, we fragment these million-year-old connections. It is the loss of wildlife that destroys ecosystem stability, not the loss of habitat. Habitat can regrow and we can plant trees. But unless animals remain adequately linked to the landscape they helped make, we lose the patterns of stability for food, water and climate … and this is everything for our survival.
If animal science is to become relevant to the future of humanity, biologists should be asking different questions, framed by an understanding of the role of wildlife in the processes and functions of ecosystems on Earth.
We don’t need to know how the butterflies migrate. Instead, we need to understand their connection to the landscape and role in ecosystem processes. We need the butterflies back if we’re to have a future.
Then the conversation moves to finding ways of protecting and rebuilding the capacity of Monarch Butterflies to retain their role on Earth.
