Lastest Research on Nagivation

[Mona Miller]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 012310.php
"Monarch butterflies reveal a novel way in which animals sense the Earth's magnetic field
UMass Medical School neurobiologists use transgenic fruit flies and monarch butterfly transgenes to help define magnetoreception mechanism"

[Paul Cherubini]

Article says: "Reppert's group is now developing behavioral assays to show that monarchs can actually use geomagnetic fields during their spectacular fall migration."

But in Arizona, some monarchs fly NORTHWEST and SOUTHEAST in the FALL
http://www.swmonarchs.org/az-recoveries.php

So this begs the question: What would Reppert's monarchs do if he conducted his "tethered monarch" experiments in Arizona? Would they orient to the SOUTHWEST as they do in his home state of Massachusetts or to the NORTHWEST or SOUTHEAST as many wild fall migrants do in Arizona? Or would they orient in all of these directions?

[dandjtaylor]

Well, Paul, good point, and if the published experiment of Chip Taylor is true, and I suppose it is, the Monarchs that he transported to Washington D.C. from Kansas did, in fact, start out going almost due South, which would be their trajectory if they were in Kansas, but in Washington aims more at Florida and the Atlantic, then after a couple of days, changes course to a more southwesterly direction, what is the mechanism that caused the delay and even the correction?

Since the Reppert studies are so close to my waystation here in Massachusetts, I have volunteered to support some studies on monarch migration, to help continue to define all of the mechanisms, whether magnetic sensitivities, photosensitivities or some other influence.