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Washington, 11 Jul (PTI) Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere pose an unknown threat to monarch butterflies, reducing the medicinal properties of milkweed plants that protect iconic insects from diseases.
Milkweed leaves contain bitter toxins that help monarchs repel predators and parasites, and the plant is the sole food of the monarch's caterpillars.
Researchers at the University of Michigan in the United States cultivated four species of milkweed with different levels of protective compounds. called cardenolides.
Half of the plants were grown under normal levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), and half of them were bathed, from dawn to dusk, in almost twice that amount. amount. The study showed that the most protective plants of the four milkweed species lost their medicinal properties when they were grown under high CO2, which resulted in a sharp decline in monarchs' ability to tolerate a common parasite.
The researchers looked only at how high levels of carbon dioxide change plant chemistry and how these changes, in turn, affect interactions between monarchs and their parasites.
"We have discovered an indirect mechanism until then unknown by which a continuous environmental change – in this case, increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 – can act on the disease. in monarch butterflies, "said Leslie Decker, first author of the study published in the journal Ecology Letters.
"Our results highlight that global environmental change may influence parasite-host interactions through changes in the plant's medicinal properties," said Decker, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the United States. United.
The results have broad implications, said Mark Hunter, ecologist at the University of Michigan
Many animals, including humans, use chemicals in the environment to help them control pests and diseases. Aspirin, digitalis, Taxol and many other drugs came from plants, he says.
"If carbon dioxide reduces the concentration of drugs in plants used by monarchs, it could change the concentration of drugs for all animals, including humans," Hunter said. SAR SAR PTI
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This is an unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India thread
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