The BugLady was pecking away at this week’s episode when she had a “Hold the Presses” moment.��BugFan Freda sent a series of pictures she had taken of a monarch caterpillar taking its first steps into the world (prefaced by the statement, “Who knew that monarchs also oviposit onto the flowers??”).��So, this week, we start with a picture story, photographed and narrated by Freda (who has some serious photography skills and a lens that the BugLady can’t lift). The picture of the older caterpillar is the BugLady’s.

Said Freda, “It was amazing watching it chew its way out of the egg. It worked almost constantly and you could tell that it was putting forth major effort. Between its hand-like mouthparts and box-cutter-like forelegs, it was punching and chewing and slicing at an amazing pace for such a tiny thing.”

“It looked like it wasn’t only busy chewing on the dry, outer edge, but there was also what appeared to be gelatinous stuff on the inside that it scooped up and worked into its mouth.] Imagine slurping up a slimy spaghetti noodle the diameter of your open mouth and having to use your hands to stuff it in. There were some pauses where you could almost hear it thinking, “I’m so stuffed, but gotta keep going – or die.” It seemed like a tremendous feat!” 

The gelatinous stuff was undoubtedly the last of the yolk material that nurtured it until it hatched.

“The caterpillar made it out and is resting now.����: )”

“As of this morning, the ‘baby’ is 3 to 3.3 mm long. As the last photo shows, it’s been eating and pooping healthily.”

Thanks, as always, for sharing your photography, Freda.

Monarch caterpillars have one pair of filaments on the front end and another on the rear end – anterior and posterior tentacles.��According to��Monarch Joint Venture, these tentacles are sensory, “The caterpillar’s tentacles are sensory organs. Caterpillar’s eyesight is poor, and tentacles are tactile. They aid in navigation on the front. They may also play a role in defense/predator confusion on the rear, leading a potential predator to think that the monarch’s rear is its head.” How do you tell one end of the caterpillar from the other (if, of course, it’s not eating)?��The longer tentacles are in the front. There is also a tiny pair of actual antennae near the mandibles, to pick up olfactory signals and help the caterpillar find food.����

Quick review: the short-lived, early and mid-summer generations of Monarchs have one job – to goose the Monarch population.��Hatch, eat, mate, lay eggs (and they’re doing a great job here this year).��The final generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 5 or the Super generation, in the air from late-August on, have a different imperative – hatch, eat, metamorphose, and migrate (which is why they’re the only generation that’s tagged).��How do they know what to do? The message comes in the form of old, leathery, bitter milkweed leaves (they prefer young and tender), fewer nectar plants, shorter day length, cooler nights, and the lowering angle of the sun (57 degrees above the horizon). And yes – we do see monarchs who seem not to have gotten the memo, flying in tandem at the end of the season. Apparently some of the penultimate generation may drift south, laying eggs as they go.��

They set their courses for a destination they’ve never seen, orienting themselves via the sun (with a dash of magnetic compass thrown in), with calculations so intricate that monarchs in Michigan, Maine and Montana set correct (but different) flight plans for central Mexico. And they find not only Mexico, but the overwintering spots in the mountains west of Mexico City.

And now a brief sermonette from the BugLady (Freda is not planning on fostering this infant until it forms and then emerges from its chrysalis, so she is exempt from the sermon). It has become popular to try to help the yo-yo-ing Monarch population by collecting eggs and hand-raising the caterpillars.��The rationale (besides the facts that it’s great fun and very sciencey) is that the caterpillars are safer in a controlled, predator-free environment.��

And indeed, they are, as long as their keepers practice good caterpillar hygiene, but caterpillars raised in the garage or basement or family room are not exposed to the environmental signals that will allow them to navigate properly. Some captive-raised butterflies do muddle through and arrive at their destination, but it’s a lower percentage than their wild-reared brethren.��

The bottom line, if raising Monarchs is your thing, park them in the back yard. suggests that we could do a lot more for Monarchs if we would plant native milkweed for the caterpillars and native wildflower gardens that will bloom through the season for nectaring butterflies.��

Go outside -watch the Monarchs!

The BugLady

The post Monarch Miracle appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady wrote this for an upcoming newsletter of the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory (an organization that would love your support). It started out as a simple report about this year’s survey of overwintering Monarch Butterflies, but then it took the bit in its teeth and became oh-so-much more.�� Put your feet up.����

Every fall, most of the Monarch Butterflies east of the Rockies set their compass for a small patch of mountains just northwest of Mexico City.��This winter’s count of eastern Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus plexippus) overwintering in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico was the second lowest since annual censusing began in 1993. In the 1990’s, the eastern Monarch Butterfly population was estimated at 70 million, and today’s numbers represent an 80% decline in population.

The census is not an actual nose-count of the butterflies themselves but is a measurement of the area they occupy.��They’re densely concentrated on their wintering grounds — scientists estimate between 20 and 30 million Monarchs per hectare (about 2.5 acres).��The lowest area, 0.67 hectares (1 66 acres), occurred 10 years ago, and the largest ever, in 1996-97, found 45 acres occupied.��This year, Monarchs were seen on 0.9 hectares (2.2 acres), down 59% from the 2022-2023 season (Dr. Karen Oberhauser, founder and director of the , points out that 2.2 acres is smaller than two football fields).��It’s felt that almost 15 acres of overwintering butterflies are needed to maintain a healthy eastern population.��“Monarch populations [are] at a level that most scientists suggest is not sustainable,” says Dr. Oberhauser.��Western Monarchs, residents and migrants along the Pacific Coast, are treated as a separate population. ����

Migration is expensive, energy-wise, and is dangerous, and the list of hazards is long.��Land use changes and habitat loss, herbicides and pesticides, loss of milkweed, car-butterfly collisions, climate change that brings harsh winter conditions to central Mexico or storms as the butterflies prepare to depart, or that puts migrating butterflies out of sync with nectar plants on their spring migration, high temperatures that reduce the nutritional value of milkweed plants, and severe drought along the fall migration route through “the Texas Funnel” have all been suggested as factors.

The integrity of the fir forests themselves is critical, but the illegal logging that has reduced the forest size and cover in the past was held to a minimum last year.��The butterflies depend on a dense forest to act as insulation so they don’t have to expend as much energy staying warm, dry, and hydrated.��

Quick review of Monarch biology and migration — there are four or five generations annually, and the last brood of the year is extraordinarily long-lived for a butterfly. It emerges in August or September, and while the earlier generations are reproductively active, this final generation is not. Signaled by decreasing day length, lowering angle of the sun, cool nights, and increasingly leathery milkweed leaves, their reproductive organs don’t mature.��Instead, they apply their energy to a journey – a leisurely trip that can cover more than two thousand miles and take two months.��The butterflies feed on nectar from a wide variety of flowers as they wend their way south, and while a newly-emerged Monarch in Wisconsin has about 20 mg of fat in its body, a Monarch newly-arrived in the oyamel fir forests of Mexico may carry 125 mg of fat.��They eat little on their wintering grounds.��

With the warming temperatures of late March, they become reproductively ready and head north through northern Mexico and our Southern states, laying eggs as they go, careful not to get ahead of the emerging milkweed plants.��Their young — the first-generation offspring of the Mexican butterflies — keep moving and recolonize the north, often arriving in Wisconsin in mid-May and in Canada shortly after that (Southern summers are too hot for the caterpillars to thrive).

Their��offspring – the second generation out of Mexico, continue to lay eggs and may fly a little farther north, but most have reached their destinations by the end of June.��The “job” of this short-lived generation (and of the next generation, if there’s time for one) is to stay put and use their energy to build up the population. The migratory final generation, sometimes called Gen 5 or the Super Generation, is the only one that is tagged.��

This complicated dance depends on good weather, milkweeds for caterpillars, and abundant nectar plants for adults. Monarchs will lay their eggs on a variety of milkweed species, but Common milkweed is the favorite.��

.

There have been passionate efforts in past years to list the Monarch as an Endangered Species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).��Classification under the ESA is a lengthy process, there are many other deserving candidates, and listing requires both a recovery plan and a dedicated budget.�� ��

Monarch populations are subject to wide swings, but a low year followed by another low year lessens the possibility of a speedy comeback.��Overall population levels in the summer of 2023 were not alarming, but severe heat and drought in the Texas Funnel migratory corridor probably resulted in fewer Monarchs finishing their journey to Mexico.��

Based on a few recent studies, there are voices, even voices within the Monarch Butterfly community, that suggest (counterintuitively) that there’s no need to change the Monarch’s status, citing past population plunges and recoveries.��The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a leading scientific authority on the status of species, recently downgraded Monarchs on their Red List of Threatened Species from Endangered to Vulnerable.��

Some of the arguments are historical. Monarchs like milkweeds, and milkweeds like sunshine, and the treeless Great Plains is thought by some to be the historical center of both Monarch and milkweed populations.��Too, there was lots of sunshine during the long postglacial period while trees moved back north after the most recent glacier pushed them south, and some speculate that milkweeds and Monarchs took that opportunity to push east and increase their numbers before the forests regrew.��

The early settlers cut down swathes of America’s Great Eastern Forest to establish villages and farms, making the area sunnier and more Monarch/milkweed-friendly, and some say that Monarch populations are larger now than they were 200 years ago.��Today, they say, Monarchs are adapting to modern stressors, and they’re establishing some non-migratory breeding communities in Florida and around the Gulf Coast.��Monarchs, some scientists say, are not at risk, but the eastern Monarch��migration��may be (a distinction without a difference to Monarch lovers). ����

Did the Monarch’s eastward expansion into a glacially-modified landscape and later into a human-modified landscape artificially boost their numbers, so that what’s happening today is just a “course correction?” Should we base the butterfly’s status on the wintering numbers rather than the summertime population?��On today’s numbers vs long-time averages?��Is it better to err on the side of caution?”��Will there, as Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch says��“always be Monarchs?”

Only time –- and more research — will tell who’s got it right. In the meantime, what can we do to help?��

• Plant native, not tropical, milkweeds for caterpillar host plants.��The tropical milkweed��Asclepias curassavica��may discourage migration and encourage disease, and the toxins in its sap may be a ;
• Plant lots of native nectar flowers that will bloom throughout the summer for the butterflies;
• Reduce or discontinue pesticide use;
• The urges us to put our efforts into habitat improvement rather than into the captive rearing of caterpillars;
• .

The BugLady

The post The Monarch Butterfly Problem appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady is already fantasizing about warm, sunny days in a wetland, photographing Swamp milkweed (and dragonflies), because she loves its color, and she loves being in wetlands, and because it’s a very busy plant, indeed!  

Also called rose or red milkweed (there are a couple of species of southern milkweeds that are also called red milkweed), white Indian hemp, water nerve-root, and water silkweed, Swamp milkweed prefers damp soils and full sun near the water’s edge. 

Indians, and later, the European settlers, used it medicinally (a tea made from the roots was reputed to “drive the worms from a person in one hour’s time”). It was used with caution – its sap is poisonous – and the cardiac glycosides that protect Monarchs also deter mammals from grazing on all but the very young plants.��The fibers in its stem were twisted into rope and twine and were used in textiles.

Its flowers are typical milkweed flowers – a corona of five parts (hoods) with curved petals below and curved, nectar-secreting horns above.��The flowers are tricky – sticky, golden, saddlebag-shaped pollinia are hidden behind what one author calls a trap door (a��stigmatic slit).��Insects walk around on the flower head, and when one of their feet slips through the slit by chance, a pollinium sticks to it.��When the bug encounters a stigmatic slit on the next plant it visits, the pollen is inadvertently delivered.��A quick-and-dirty, pick-up and delivery is what the plant had in mind; but, like the story of the raccoon (or was it a monkey) that reaches into the jar for a candy bar and then can’t pull its fist out of the small opening, sometimes the insect’s foot gets stuck to pollinia inside the trap door. Insects that can’t free themselves will die dangling from the flower, and insects that escape may be gummed up by the waxy structures.�� Look carefully for pollinia in the pictures.

Milkweeds support complex communities of invertebrates – their nectar attracts ants, bugs, beetles, flies, butterflies, moths, bees, and wasps, plus predators looking for a meal.��Here are some of the insects that the BugLady sees on Swamp milkweed.

MULBERRY WING SKIPPER – A small (one-inch-ish wingspan) butterfly of wetlands with an arrow or airplane-shaped marking on its rich, chestnut-brown underwings ().��Adults fly slowly through low vegetation, where females lay their eggs on the leaves of sedges.��

FLOWER LONGHORN BEETLE��BRACHYLEPTURA��CHAMPLAINI��(no common name), on a Swamp milkweed leaf. Other than a “present” checkoff in a variety of natural area insect surveys, there’s just about nothing online about this beetle, and not much more in Evans’ book,��Beetles of Eastern North America. It’s a long-horned beetle in the Flower longhorn subfamily��Lepturinae, a group that feeds on pollen in the daytime. This one has pollinia on its mouthparts.

Also seen were ants, leafcutter bees, sweat bees, Great black wasps, Great golden digger wasps, Red soldier beetles, Fiery and Broad-winged Skipper butterflies, and Thick-headed flies.  

The BugLady

The post Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady wrote this article for the newsletter of the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory (an organization that would love to have your support).

Although they meet the criteria to be included as a Threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Monarch butterflies will not receive that protection at this time. This “waiting list” status (there are 161 species ahead of it) does not offer the butterfly any protections, but the spotlight is now on it, and its case will be reviewed annually until 2024, when it will probably be listed. Although they are numbered at about 60 million today, that’s down significantly from the hundreds of millions of Monarchs that were estimated to exist before the mid-1990s. Overall, their populations have dropped by more than 90% since then. For reference, the land area of North America is about 9.5 million square miles, and assuming that Monarchs were evenly distributed across the continent—which they aren’t—that works out to just over six Monarchs per square mile.

In 2014, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned to declare Monarch butterflies a Threatened species (“a species likely to become endangered within a significant portion of its range in the foreseeable future”). The FWS’s 90-day study indicated that listing might be merited, which initiated a status review.

Once a petition is accepted, ESA protocol requires the FWS to issue a 12-month finding, but that 2015 deadline went by. In 2016, the organizations that originally petitioned the FWS filed a complaint with a Washington D.C. court, which set a new the deadline of December, 2019. In 2019, an extension was granted in recognition of the fact that understanding the effects of climate on Monarchs warranted more data. The decision not to list was finally released in mid-December, 2020.

When listing was originally proposed in 2014, the agency received more than 500,000 comments from individuals, organizations, and businesses in support of the Monarch.

Monarchs are complicated. Their numbers naturally fluctuate, and historically, there are two populations – a western population in the Pacific Coast states, and a population east of the Rockies. The western population, which has declined dramatically from 200,000 in 2017 to only 2,000 in the winter 2020-21 count, moves north and south along the coast and overwinters in California. Eastern Monarchs, the bulk of them from the Midwestern states, migrate south in fall to overwinter in a small area in the mountains of central Mexico. There are also some permanent populations in southern Florida and along the Gulf Coast. In terms of listing, the western and eastern populations can’t be separated, and California’s state ESA does not monitor insects.

While the FWS acknowledged the needs of the Monarch, they noted that there are already many federal, state, and local conservation efforts that work to increase breeding and nectaring habitat. Monarchs have also introduced themselves (or been introduced) outside their original range, to Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii, New Guinea, Portugal, and Spain, and some of these populations are doing well in their new homes.

Monarchs need to be on the ESA list so that federal protections will apply to them, but placing a species on the list means that the FWS must draw up and carry out a recovery plan, which they must budget for. Being put on the waiting list is a “win,” but the lower a species’ numbers are allowed to go, the harder it is to bring them back, and some researchers predict that Monarchs could be at the point of no return within ten years.

Karen Oberhauser, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, summarizes the frustration:��“While all of the people that care about monarchs are doing a lot of positive things, there are a lot of negative things happening at the same time. We’re running as fast as we can to stay in the same place.”

The winter of 2020-2021 was a rough one for Monarchs. First, 26% fewer Monarchs arrived at the wintering areas in central Mexico than the previous year. Second, the Monarchs that got there found fewer trees to perch in, due to illegal logging, normal tree fall, and drought. Gaps in the forest canopy affect the temperature and humidity around the Monarchs—remember, this overwintering thing only works because the Monarchs are inactive in winter, living off the fat supplies they packed on during their leisurely south-bound flight. Anything that forces them to use that precious energy (colder air, human disturbance) threatens their return trip. Finally, there was less milkweed in their breeding grounds, too, due to weather events related to Climate change.

Three easy things you can do for Monarchs:

• Plant native (Midwestern) milkweed, the only host plant for Monarch caterpillars (resist the showy, tropical varieties, whose chemicals are bad for the caterpillars);
• Plant native wildflowers that will bloom throughout the summer for the butterflies to nectar on;
• If you must use herbicides or pesticides, use them sparingly and very specifically.

The BugLady

The post Listing the Monarch appeared first on Field Station.

As always, we pause to celebrate (while humming seasonal songs and drinking eggy, adult beverages), the Twelve Bugs of Christmas (plus one) – a baker’s dozen of bugs, many of whom have already starred in their own BOTWs but who posed nicely for the BugLady this year.

Acmaeodora pulchella – The BugLady is no fan of symmetry, and she likes that the lack of it in this picture creeps up on you. The bookend beetles are called Spotted/Yellow-marked flower beetles (Acmaeodora pulchella–“pulchellos” being Latin for “beautiful”), in the metallic wood borer family Buprestidae.

Azure Bluet Damselfly – “bright blue in color, like a cloudless sky.”

Praying mantis – There are some bugs that seem, well, just a little improbable, and there are some bugs that are really easy to anthropomorphize. Praying mantises check both boxes. Remember, the spelling of their name comes from their devout posture, not from the predatory aspect of those raptorial front legs. This graceful youngster was photographed in southern Ohio. Here’s a praying mantis bedtime story for your enjoyment .

A Racket-tailed Emerald dragonfly hangs from a twig like a small ornament.

This Bald-faced Hornet nest is 10 feet off a trail that the BugLady uses pretty often, and she walked past it without noticing it until fall, when some leaves dropped off the shrub and revealed it, like a present being unwrapped. That’s the down-side of Bald-faced hornets – you can get pretty darn close to their paper abode before you see it, and they defend it vigorously (and, no, pitching rocks at it from a distance is not an alternative for the curious – they will find you).

Crab spider – There are two nifty bits of camouflage going on here. First, the eternal wonder of a crab spider finding just the right spot to sit. Second, the “fly” that this spider has snagged is actually a beetle named Ripiphorus (of previous BOTW fame /field-station/bug-of-the-week/its-a-beetle-really/). The BugLady has no idea why it would be an advantage to look like a fly.

Orange Sulphur Butterfly – Occasionally (and, in the BugLady’s case, mainly by accident) the planets line up and you get something like this – an almost-in-focus Orange Sulphur coming in to feed on New England aster.

Red-belted Bumblebee – Although she is not very good at identifying them, the BugLady surely loves taking pictures of bumblebees. There were lots of sightings this summer of the federally-endangered Rusty-patched Bumblebee (more about that in a future BOTW). The BugLady’s walks are going to take a whole lot longer if she’s checking the rear ends of every bumblebee she finds!

Virginia Ctenucha moth – This striking moth was just starting to unfurl its wings. Here’s what the finished product looks like .

Pine tree Spur-throated Grasshopper – Grasshoppers can be tough to identify and even tougher to photograph, and the BugLady has never really been a grasshopper person. Pine tree spur-throated grasshoppers, like this beauty, could convert her.

Sign-reading Grasshopper – That being said, she hopes that this Differential grasshopper finishes reading and moves on before it becomes a statistic.

DOR in Ohio – The BugLady found this foursome in the middle of a country road in Ohio after a dark and stormy night. The main attraction is a shiny, green, road-kill Japanese beetle. It’s being attended by a scavenging millipede and a daddy longlegs, both of whom are there for the free (and tenderized) protein. The fourth member of the quartet? Those tiny red ornaments on the daddy longlegs’ legs are mites that are acting like ticks (“So, naturalists observe, a flea/Has smaller fleas that on him prey;/And these have smaller still to bite ’em,/And so proceed ad infinitum…..” Jonathan Swift).

A Monarch Caterpillar contemplating the miraculous road ahead of it /field-station/bug-of-the-week/pupal-cases/.

May your holiday season be bursting with warmth and family and friends and festivities and music.

The BugLady

The post The 12 Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.