Whenever someone begins a sentence, “Can I ask you a question about butterflies?” the odds are good, particularly if I’m in North America at the time, that it is going to be a question about Monarchs. And there’s plenty of reasons for this. Even if Monarchs aren’t prominent among your local lepidoptera (as is my own situation, for where we live sees Western Tiger Swallowtails are the ubiquitous species), there is simply something about these vivid black-and-orange butterflies that has captured the popular imagination.
Of course, there is much more to them than the fact that they’re pretty. To naturalists, their migrations and their relationship to milkweed have long been topics of profound interest. Therefore, it is to be strongly suspected that Anurag Agrawal‘s new Monarchs and Milkweed; A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution
