As Dr. Oberhauser's report describes, graduate student Liz Goering is currently using monarchs collected in Mexico to study how mating and access to host plants affect the timing of female diapause termination. This is of course true. Any behavior that is not learned can only be explained by instinct. Since these monarchs were not alive last spring, their behavior cannot have been learned. Monarchs know when to leave Mexico in the spring because the information is passed from generation to generation through their genes.
Survival depends on being the right place at the right time.
Please include the name of your school and your location so we can credit you properly for your answers. The Next Monarch Migration Update Will be Posted on March 25, 1997.