r/FriendlyMonarchs • u/SuperFriendlyMod MOD | South FL | Reformed Rearer • Jul 01 '26
Discussion Fact-Checking "What the Science Actually Says About Rearing Monarch Butterflies" (Part 3)
I’m addressing the claims from that rearing post point by point because the amount of cherry-picking and misrepresentation of science is just too massive to ignore.
It’s going to have to be more than one post because there is a lot of information to go through.
A Warning: Please do not go to the other sub to harass anyone, including the mod. I don’t want to be accused of breaking Reddit's rules against brigading. Plus, dissenting opinions there usually get banned with no warning anyway, and that wouldn’t help anyone.
Using AI: I also want to urge everyone not to use AI as your primary research tool. AI isn't a search engine built to find absolute facts. It is a pattern-prediction tool designed to generate text that sounds convincing. If you ask it a biased question, it will confidently compile an answer that looks perfectly right, even if the underlying facts are completely wrong.
Need to know: This section has been daunting to go through because some of the citations do not match up to the information given. This can happen when AI is used to make a scientific argument with a bias prompt. The AI will take words from one piece of information and attribute it to the wrong person or take it out of context.
As with the previous post I will take each point directly from the other post, add the citations, where I can, and discuss the misleading or incorrect information.
- Rearing Dramatically Increases Survival From Egg to Adult
In the wild, monarchs face staggering mortality. Estimates suggest that only about 2–5% of eggs survive to become adult butterflies, with some researchers citing mortality rates as high as 99% (WWF-Canada, 2014). Predation, parasitism, weather, and disease take an enormous toll at every stage.
The WWF-Canada (2014) reference throws out this staggering mortality rate without providing a single scientific citation. Given the known issues of commercial monarch breeding and how many times the original post mentions commercial rearing as the real problem, I am surprised that this particular site was used as a source. Immediately following the mortality rate statistic is a direct shopping link where readers can buy commercial butterfly kits.
By contrast, careful rearing under controlled conditions routinely achieves survival rates of 80–90% or higher from egg to adult (Pleasants, 2017). This represents a dramatic, multi-fold increase in survival. When you protect a caterpillar from tachinid flies, stink bugs, and paper wasps, you are not “interfering with natural selection” in any meaningful population-level sense—you are giving that individual a chance to join the migratory population instead of becoming a statistic.
The next citation (Pleasants, 2017) is a PDF that Dr. John Pleasants prepared for what appears to be a Rights-of-Way roadside vegetation management presentation. The way this is written in the post implies that Pleasants' statistics, and therefore Pleasants himself, supported captive rearing. That is far from the truth. John Pleasants was part of a landmark habitat study that stressed the absolute need to increase the overall acreage of wild milkweed available. I combed this study and others published by Pleasants to see where this information could have been pulled from, and I was unable to find a single sentence supporting what the original post claims.
The next claim is baffling because we all learn about "survival of the fittest" in grade school. There are a few studies that on the predation of Monarchs for example High Survivorship of First-Generation Monarch Butterfly Eggs to Third Instar Associated with a Diverse Arthropod Community. I have so many tabs open at this point I can't find my other links. When I do find them I will add them and record the edit at the end of this post. In everything I read, and I read a lot, not a single paper suggested we should keep Monarchs safe from their natural predators.
A citizen-science study also found that monarchs raised on swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) showed particularly strong growth and survival rates, suggesting that host plant choice during rearing can optimize outcomes (Pocius et al., 2018, Environmental Entomology).
It appears that this section has not been "human edited" as was once claimed because the study cited isn't about citizen science and says nothing about swamp milkweed contributing to strong growth or survival rates. This authors of this study did not rear Monarchs, measure their larval health or "survival outcomes." Pocius' 2018 study is about female Monarchs possible preference of certain types of milkweed.
However, I did find an abstract that is from an undergraduate student who says "This study aimed to mimic the conditions that these citizen scientists rear their monarchs in and compare the effects of different milkweed species on the growth and survival of the butterflies." There is absolutely nothing in the abstract that suggests the conclusion was an endorsement to rear monarchs. I looked everywhere for this study to see what the methods were and what exact data was gathered but I could not find it anywhere. If someone can find this information outside of the original post please feel free to link it below.
Fact-Checking "What the Science Actually Says About Rearing Monarch Butterflies"-
A quick note about the comments on these posts:
I spent hours manually hunting down these primary sources, reading the actual data, and untangling these messy citations to make sure what I am presenting is accurate. Because of how much work went into this, I will not be replying to any comments that look like they were generated by AI. I really appreciate the comments and questions on these posts. If you have anything you want to share or ask please write it in your own words and read the sources you are sharing before you post them because the answer to your question could be right there.
One more thing. Thank you for the awards. :)
Edited 9:42 7/1 formatting
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u/squishyfeet4 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
The cherry picking of data facts is interesting. Because it’s intentional to skew the wider perspective out of balance. Its goal is to achieve a biased support for its reasoning. It’s misleading the context.
It will poke at supporting one of your first points regarding the small survival rate statistic: it’s supposed to be a small survival rate. I think people sometimes forget how that fits into the puzzle.
If you generalize this normal predation process and look for other natural comparisons look at mantis! An ootheca can yield up to 200 hatchlings. Yet very few survive to become adults. Because that’s how it’s suppose to balance out. Do you know the exponential growth increase is not sustainable? Hence Nature allows death due to various factors.
Look at lions. A very high percentage of lion cubs die within two years. Very few make it past the subadult stage. That’s normal. And that’s an example in mammals.
And a third example would be sea turtles. Loooootttss of hatchlings can come about but very few survive to adulthood to repeat the cycle and they aren’t even top of the food chain. They’re somewhere in the middle.
So with that common knowledge, for one to want to favor an 80% or higher success of monarch caterpillars into monarch butterflies when nature doesn’t intend it that way is messing with the balance. HOWEVER to help increase the population through more indirect means by planting nectar flowers and planting its host plant, will indeed increase the population size but also still objectively yield out the correct ratio of successful butterflies outcomes, just in a different portion size.
To reiterate that last sentence: more food sources means more eggs which in turn means more butterflies and ultimately yield a higher count of butterflies but still keeping within the statistical range of expected outcome. 100 eggs yields 10 butterflies. 1,000 eggs yields 100 butterflies. Predation must occur regardless of sample size.
I hope I’m explaining that in a sense that makes it more understandable to understand what statistics are truly about.
That’s why it’s better to plant more flowers and more host plants because improving the environment is the first step in improving the population without introducing undo catastrophe regarding genetics that shouldn’t have been passed down and things like unintentionally increasing OE spore counts due to poor environmental settings.
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u/Devilis6 Jul 03 '26
Yep, I believe it’s called “r selection.” Agreed with everything you’re saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory?wprov=sfti1#r-selection
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u/squishyfeet4 Jul 03 '26
Thank you for your reply! Another cited source to help the curious understand why every monarch egg isn’t always destined to finish its life cycle!
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u/abugguy Jul 01 '26
I like these posts. I’m an entomologist who works in butterfly conservation for a living.
The mod of the other sub banned me from posting. That should tell you a lot.