News Animals

Winter road salting reshapes next summer’s butterflies

Anti-ice treatments can have sex-specific effects

SALTED  Monarch butterflies that weren’t even alive during the winter can show the physiological effects of road salting if caterpillars fed on milkweeds that picked up extra sodium. 

Seney Natural History Association/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Salting roads in winter can tweak the physiques of butterflies the next summer.

Milkweeds and oaks, plants that caterpillars graze on, collected from alongside a country road carried higher sodium concentrations than the same species growing at least 100 meters from the splash and drift of deicing salt, says Emilie Snell-Rood of the University of Minnesota in St.