Host Plants and Climate Structure Habitat Associations of the Western Monarch Butterfly

The monarch butterfly is one of the most easily recognized and frequently studied insects in the world, and has recently come into the spotlight of public attention and conservation concern because of declining numbers of individuals associated with both the eastern and western migrations. Historically, the larger eastern migration has received the most scientific attention, but this has been changing in recent years, and here we report the largest-ever attempt to map and characterize non-overwintering habitat for the western monarch butterfly. Across the environmentally and topographically complex western landscape, we include 8,427 observations of adults and juvenile monarchs, as well as 20,696 records from 13 milkweed host plant species. We find high heterogeneity of suitable habitats across the geographic range, with extensive concentrations in the California floristic province in particular. We also find habitat suitability for the butterfly to be structured primarily by host plant habitat associations, which are in turn structured by a diverse suite of climatic variables. These results add to our knowledge of range and occupancy determinants for migratory species and provide a tool that can be used by conservation biologists and researchers interested in interactions among climate, hosts and host-specific animals, and by managers for prioritizing future conservation actions at regional to watershed scales

Domestic spaces

This chapter discusses Jewish domestic space in Egypt, Syria, Judaea, Asia Minor, and Italy from the third century BCE to the end of the second century CE using material and literary evidence. Domestic spaces vary along geographical but especially socio‐economic lines. Wealthy households lived in large mansions while poor families crammed into small rooms in high‐rise buildings. Elite and non‐elite domestic spaces doubled as areas for work and business. A persistent difficulty is identifying markers of religious or cultural identity in domestic architecture that might distinguish Jewish and non‐Jewish homes; for the most part, Jewish homes have more in common with other homes of similar status than with co‐religionists of different status. Jews lived in the same kind of homes as their non‐Jewish neighbors