15 minute read
Butterflies 43 Essential Telephone Nos
Our biggest local butterfly – the Monarch (Danaus plexippus)
I wonder how many of us are aware that here in our part of the Costa del Sol, we have large numbers of the well known Monarch butterfly, living and breeding and thriving. Along the shores of the Straight of Gibraltar and inland for some ten kilometers, there are several colonies from Tarifa to Manilva. Before about 1980, Spain’ s only colony was in the Canaries, but sufficient individuals have been blown by the winds to set up a local colony on our doorstep. See: Castellar Sendero de la Mariposa Monarca on Wikiloc.com -and others. The Monarch is well known because of the vast flocks that live on both the east and west coasts of the USA, and migrate every year to the southern states and Mexico. In fact, their popularity is so great that, in the USA the butterflies have been reared artificially by individuals and by schools and other groups interested in monitoring the species. There is also a commercial aspect to artificial breeding. It has become more common for hundreds of monarchs to be released at weddings –instead of confetti, and at the memorial services of the 9/11 attack, captive-bred monarchs have been released in huge numbers. In addition, it is, so far, the only butterfly to have been taken into outer space, to the International Space Station for research purposes, and where it emerged successfully from its pupa, and also was the first type of butterfly to have its genome fully sequenced. While some biologists consider that rearing large numbers of Monarch by untrained people runs the risk of the development of parasites specific to the Monarch that may be detrimental to the species, so far, no widespread problems have been noted. Others have claimed that captive-reared Monarchs do not survive migration as well as naturally bred insects. But seeing the butterflies laying eggs that then turn into larvae (caterpillars) in a week or so, and onwards into pupae (chrysalis) and two weeks later, into an adult butterfly reaching sexual maturity in 4 or 5 days, and starting the process all over again, must be a great educational experience for young and old alike.
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It is said that the Monarch was given its name at the time of William III, the monarch whose other title was Prince of Orange, the butterfly being predominantly orange in colour (with black veins and white spots on its wings). The wide range of variants of the Monarch live around the same basic food plant, the milkweed (or convolvulus) for much of their lives. The adults lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves of the milkweed, so that the caterpillars can feed immediately on the white sap of the plant. The adults live off other plants providing nectar, including Spanish Flag (Asclepias curassavica), and from late spring to early winter can be seen in domestic gardens. Once they have over-wintered, adults migrate in large numbers but more seem to be content to stay where the food is readily available, both in America and in Europe. Courtship occurs in flight and mating takes place on the ground, both male and female mating repeatedly, and the female producing hundreds of eggs throughout the warmer parts of the season. The eggs that survive predators reach the caterpillar stage; fewer still reach the larval stage. But the adult butterfly apparently doesn’t taste very nice, and has few predators. Some birds have developed the ability to take only the tasty parts and reject the rest. Environmentalists are keen to include the Monarch in nature’s life cycle, as part of the food chain. The numbers that survive suggest they have a point. Submitted by Geoff Morgan
Maybe one million people worldwide will have died of the virus –it must be the worst. Oh no. Read on….
The outbreak of Spanish Flu, back in 1918-1920 was so devastating that it was included with dramatic effect in the Downton Abbey saga on TV, as well as in other novels and plays. As most of us know, it was nothing to do with Spain, but occurred at the end of the Great War that Spain did not take part in. Nobody else who took part in the war would accept responsibility, so Spain was blamed. In fact a form of ‘flu was noted in early 1918, by US troops stationed in Kansas near a hog farm. They carried it to Europe, spread it to others in their camps, in transit, and eventually in the trenches. Within a month or so, another strain was identified in Aldershot, and a more extensive outbreak was noted at Etaples, in France, also near a piggery. At the time, the symptoms suggested that they were all the same flu, and similar to the variant that was noted in 1915, and governments around the world did not make much fuss about it. Fighting a world war was bad enough; morale would have been utterly destroyed if the populations were to find out that it really was a world-wide killer –and not until much later did the world find out just how dangerous it was. And probably nothing to do with the pigs! Looking at earlier pandemics, the outbreak in 1889-90 was called Russian Flu in Western Europe, while the Russians called all flus ‘Chinese catarrh’, the Germans called it the ‘Russian Pest’, the Italians called it the ‘German disease’. German soldiers called it ‘Flemish Fever’, in Senegal, it was ‘Brazilian flu’, in Brazil it was ‘German flu’, in India ‘Bombay flu’ and in Spain it was called French flu. Japan blamed their sumo wrestlers who came home with the infection from a match in Taiwan, where three top wrestlers died, and called it Sumo flu. Wartime censorship stifled the newspapers at the time, but as Spain was a non-combatant nation, and there were over 100,000 cases identified in Spain, poor old Spain got blamed. Spanish flu came in four waves (we now call them new variants) two in 1918, and one in 1919 and the last one in 1920, after which it was referred to a ‘seasonal flu’. In those days we did not know a germ from a virus, and had no idea how to treat the suffering soldiers. Electron microscopes were not invented until the 1930s, so there was no way of creating a cure. Even the new wonder-drug (aspirin) didn’t help. The flu eventually died out, but between 1918 and 1923,
across the world, some 500 million people –about one third of the world population - contracted the illness and perhaps as many as 50 or even 100 million people died of it. Record-keeping was not as we know it today!
We now know that the ‘flu’ was an H1N1 variant of virus, similar to what we fondly call winter flu. It became a world-wide killer due to the sheer numbers of soldiers who caught it, and who gave it to their colleagues. The soldiers with ‘mild’ flu were ordered to remain in position in their trenches, where they helped to give each other some degree of herd-immunity. The bad cases were sent off to the field hospitals where the virus was passed on to already injured patients, or ordered home in packed trains and ships. Many died in transit from all the belligerent armies, with about 900,000 German soldiers, three quarters of the French army and about a half of the British soldiers being infected.
On the front line, there was no quarantining. In individual nations, it was possible and effective in small territories such as American Samoa, New Caledonia and Australia where no deaths were recorded. After the war and the easing of quarantine rules, deaths did occur in each territory.
1918 Chicago newspaper headlines By comparison, Western Samoa had been occupied by New Zealand soldiers during the war and with no control over the disease, 90% of the population caught the flu, with 30% of the men, 22% of the women and 10% of the children dying. Specific living conditions also affected the mortality rates –some Alaskan villages were wiped out, others lost 40% of their populations. Iran, also suffering a severe famine, lost about 20% of its people and in Ireland at the worst phase of the pandemic, over 30% of deaths were attributed to the flu. As a further comparison, in the mid-14C –The Black Death, and in the early14thC –the Great Famine, mortality rates were only a little worse. Spanish flu was about four times more lethal than the Covid-19 by the currently available figures. But note! In the 1920s there was an outbreak of encephalitis lethargica that was linked to the flu virus; perhaps a guide to considering what ‘long covid’ will look like.
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