notes for population trends group

Present - Andy, Leslie, Chip, Erica

Before we started Chip said he is working on a separate paper describing long-term trends in monarch abundance using Cape May, Peninsula Point, Long Point and Mexico. We therefore decided not to overlap with his work, so we decided instead to focus on another data set. We then discussed the long-term trends in NABA 4th July butterfly counts (Leslie's analyses), and discussed the possibly of turning that into a stand-alone manuscript. Most of the analysis has been done already, so we would only need to come up with rationale for paper - i.e. the focus of the manuscript - in a nutshell, the paper will be describing the "Long-term trends in monarch abundance from North American Butterfly Counts"

*Chip voiced concerns over the validity of the data given the timing of the counts

**Chip wants to include climate into paper to explain variation in counts - discussed ways to correlate annual temps and precip with long-term trends in abundance - will explore this option with some data to see what the trends show - Chip found a source called Climate at a Glance that will show long-term trends in weather data

Leslie found the climate data from Climate at a Glance and compared it to the long-term NABA trends and found no obvious relationship. We decided to keep the data and analyses on the back burner in case a reviewer calls for it.

Since the Long-term trends in the NABA data show a long-term decline in Western population, and no long-term trend in east, as well as higher variation (ups and downs) in northern counts - this will be the focus of the paper.

A possible hook for paper will be comparing the long-term trends across nation/regions, possibly overlaying human density/growth on count data. We also could focus on trends in abundance as well as the variation in numbers (i.e. deviation from mean)

Erica thought that the long-term declines in west mirrored trends in smelt in the west - she will explore this further

Notes to remember for Monarch Population Trends Manuscript

Target Journal = Ecology Letters - Leslie wants to start with a high impact journal, then work down

Figure 1 in the paper will be large map showing locations of survey routes and divisions of regions of analyses across continent

Erica made a comment on the western data that was very poignant and we felt would be important to say in the paper - "Conditions in the west do not currently support this species in their historic numbers"

*Andy said the paper will probably make the New York Times!

Timeline for tasks:

Leslie will start working on manuscript,

Leslie will send NABA summaries to Chip: 

will send raw NABA data and climate data to Chip to play with,

   From Climate @ glance: East NCentral (wks 22&23), Central (wks 22&23), NEast (wks 21&22)

DEADLINE FOR FIRST PASS OF MANUSCRIPT - by the 1st week of Aug Leslie will have methods, results, figures

At that time Leslie will send to Andy to flesh out intro, discussion

Manuscript will be submitted (and possibly rejected) before next NCEAS meeting

Preliminary author list - Leslie, Andy, Chip, Karen, Erica(?)