Insects on Plants, Chemical Ecology, and Coevolution
Website of the Phytophagy Lab at Cornell University, led by Anurag Agrawal, James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies
I just received word from the Dean’s office in CALS that I have been appointed the James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies at Cornell! This is a huge honor, and I am thrilled and excited.
Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t know who he was. J.A. Perkins, who passed away 20 years ago, was the 7th President of Cornell. Here is… Read more 
Science education should start early! And as part of our collaborative NSF grant on milkweed genetics and ecology (with Georg Jander from BTI and Steve Broyles from Suny Cortland), we are implementing outreach projects in the K-12 Ithaca schools. Led by research support specialist, Amy Hastings, and inspired by a set of experiments by former postdoc Patty Jones, second graders… Read more 
Things are going well on the sabbatical in Missoula, MT! On November 9th I will be speaking at a “friend-raiser” associated with the Montana Natural History Center and the Missoula Insectarium. And in December I will be speaking at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. Both talks will give an overview of monarchs and milkweed and an update on their current predicament. I… Read more 
An excellent new study finds that climate, habitat loss (in both Mexico and the USA), disease, & insecticides contribute to decline of monarch butterflies. Although one could quibble with the emphasis placed on discussion of various issues, what I appreciate is the quantitative nature and comprehensiveness of the study, and the attempt to include as many factors as possible. Perhaps… Read more 
On July 24th 2017, I set out with my family from Ithaca, NY, for year-long sabbatical leave from Cornell University. Our destination for the fall semester is Missoula, Montana, but our first major stop was a family visit in Urbana, IL. Given my travel companions, especially the kids Jasper (12) and Anna (8), we decided to take our time driving… Read more 
US agriculture is based on ideas that make me scratch my head. We typically grow plants that are not native to North America, we grow them as annuals, and we usually only care about one product from the crop, like the tomatoes that give us ketchup and pizza.
And we don’t like weeds. Why would we? They take resources… Read more 
It’s peak season for milkweed and the village of insects that make milkweed its home. In my book on Monarchs and Milkweed, I devote an entire chapter to these diverse and fascinating other milkweed insects. Below are photos from two days last week (July 6 and 7th), one set from my front yard and the other from Shawangunk National Grassland… Read more 
See new op-ed article posted on Scientific American: Monarchs in Peril… Read more 
Here is an update on monarch and milkweed happenings… Over the past few weeks I have visited several natural history venues for a modest book tour — it has gone very well, with the added pleasure of meeting some well-known citizen scientists and old friends. It started with a Chats in the Stacks at Cornell which is now online on… Read more 
Coevolution is a special kind of evolution. And monarchs and milkweeds exemplify this special process. In particular, what makes coevolution special is reciprocity. In other words, coevolution is one species that evolves in response to the other, and the other species evolves in response to the first. Thus, it is a back-and-forth that has the potential to spiral out of… Read more 
I recently returned from a spring trip to the Austin, TX area in search of re-migrating monarch butterflies: 8-month old animals weighing less than a dollar bill, that had traveled for thousands of miles, rested in Mexico for 5 months, and crossed the border again. A postdoc in the lab, Patty Jones, joined for the trip, which auspiciously started with… Read more 
The following is a Q&A just posted to the Princeton University Press website and blog.
What makes monarchs and milkweeds so special?
AA: Monarchs and milkweed are remarkable creatures, they’re on a wild ride! From the monarch’s perspective, its only food as a caterpillar is the milkweed plant. This makes them highly specialized, highly evolved, and very picky eaters indeed.… Read more 
Monarchs and Milkweed is now available, although the official release date from Princeton University Press in
April 11. On Saturday April 8th, I will be participating in the San Antonio Book Festival. Early reviews have been positive (thank you!), including a whirlwind summary in the Washington Post, which emphasizes conservation issues and my argument that milkweed limitation is not driving… Read more 
It’s unclear when humans became humans. Presumably it was a gradual growth of our consciousness over the eons. There are some things, however, that appear to distinguish us from most other animals. For example, our artistic depictions. From the deepest, darkest caves have emerged pictures of humanity from thousands of years ago. And in an Egyptian tomb, that of Nebamun,… Read more 
The estimates of the monarch butterfly overwintering population were announced Thursday February 9th by WWF Mexico. The butterflies are so dense at their dozen or so mountain-top clustering sites that overwintering butterflies cannot be counted. Instead, the area of forest that is densely coated with butterflies (at about 5,000 butterflies per square meter looking up into the canopy) is estimated… Read more 
The plight of monarch butterflies is often in the news and many scientists around the world are working hard to understand their annual migratory cycle. How do the monarchs produced during summer in the northern reaches of America contribute to the overwintering population in Mexico? The origins of monarch butterflies that make it to Mexico has been hotly debated and… Read more
My new book, Monarchs and Milkweed, a highly illustrated popular science book will be available in late March from Princeton University Press. Here is what Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, says: It’s impossible to imagine the world without monarch butterflies. But they face mounting challenges. This clear, fact-packed book looks at this astonishing and… Read more