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BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE

13 June 2007

Plight of the Monarch butterfly

To celebrate his 75th year and mark his more than 50 years' research on the Monarch butterfly, Professor Lincoln Brower will be speaking at two special events on Wednesday 27 June 2007 at the Natural History Museum and Thursday 28 June 2007 at the Linnean Society of London.

The annual migration of the Monarch butterfly is the one of the greatest wonders of the natural world. Each autumn, many millions of the beautiful black and orange butterflies make an epic journey of almost 4,000 km from North America to overwinter in the highlands of central Mexico.

But this remarkable biological spectacle is under threat. Logging in Mexico is drastically reducing the size and density of the rare forests on which Monarchs depend to survive the winter, and increasing use of genetically engineered crops in North America is eliminating the Monarch's food supply.

Speaking in London, Professor Brower will reflect on a lifetime devoted to unravelling and conserving the extraordinary natural history of the Monarch butterfly.

For press passes, further information and photographs, contact Becky Allen, Press Officer, British Ecological Society, tel: 01223 570016, mob: 07949 804317, email: beckyallen@ntlworld.com.

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Notes for editors

1. Professor Lincoln Brower will give the Frederick W Edwards Lecture on Conservation issues and survival of the Monarch butterfly at 14:00 (for 14:30) on Wednesday 27 June 2007 at the Natural History Museum, London and will address a meeting of the Royal Entomological Society and the Linnean Society of London on King on the New World: the adaptive repertory of the Monarch butterfly at 17:30 (for 18:00) on Thursday 28 June 2008 at the Linnean Society of London.

2. Both events are jointly sponsored by the British Ecological Society, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Entomological Society and the Linnean Society of London.

3. Professor Lincoln Brower has spent over 50 years studying the Monarch butterfly and its remarkable migration. Educated at Princeton and Yale, Brower is Distinguished Service Professor of Zoology, Emeritus at the University of Florida, Research Professor of Biology at Sweet Briar College and the author of more than 200 scientific papers. During the 1970s, he was one of the first ecologists to discover the Monarch's Mexican overwintering sites.

4. The British Ecological Society is a learned society, a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. Established in 1913 by academics to promote and foster the study of ecology in its widest sense, the Society has 4,000 members in the UK and abroad. Further information is available at www.britishecologicalsociety.org.

Copyright 2007 British Ecological Society. All Rights Reserved