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.

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.

The BugLady saw her first monarch butterfly about 10 days ago, and today saw the first on her property.  Here’s a rerun from two years ago on the status of the monarch, with different pictures, and a few goodies at the end.  For up-to-date information, see .

It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around how populations of an organism that occurs by the millions (like the horseshoe crab, of recent BOTW fame) could be threatened.  And yet.

In the early 1990s, an estimated 400 million Monarch butterflies (by some accounts, 700 million) overwintered in the mountains west of Mexico City.  By 2010, that number had dropped, but it stabilized at around 100 million, though only 33 million were found in the winter of 2013-14.  This year’s population (winter of 2017-18) is estimated at 93 million; the biomass of Monarchs went, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, from covering 39 football fields to covering about one.  In the mid-1990’s, overwintering butterflies were found on about 44 mountainous acres; in 2013-14 on less than two acres; and this winter, on about 7.5 acres, down about 15% from last year.

The “Eastern Monarchs” that winter in the oyamel fir forests represent the entire migratory population this side of the Rockies.  Pacific monarchs, whose numbers are also in steep decline, migrate along the coast to California, and there are non-migratory populations along the Gulf Coast, South Florida, and South Texas.

Still, 100 million butterflies is a lot of butterflies, right?  Not when you consider the impossibility of what they do, which is to undertake a 2,000-plus mile migration, spreading out from a pinpoint in Mexico to cover two-thirds of the continent.  Monarchs weigh about one-half of a gram each, which means that a Quarter pounder is equivalent to about 225 Monarchs (the BugLady was told there would be no math).  They face the physical dangers of a trip that takes them from as far north as Canada all the way to Central Mexico, where they spend months in resting mode before perking up in late winter and meandering north.  The same individuals that left Wisconsin begin the return trip, but their offspring’s offspring tag home here in May.

They face predators, cars, habitat loss, agricultural pesticides, and the shifting seasonal temperatures and increasingly severe weather events precipitated by Global Climate Change (aka Global Weirdness.  There were three hurricanes and two tropical storms at the start of the 2017 fall migration period ).  The fall migration of 2017 along the Atlantic Coast was late, with some butterflies lingering into late October and even early November, lulled by unseasonably warm weather, the late migrants left susceptible to storms and freezes.  For a rundown on Monarch mortality factors, see “The State of the Monarch,” an August, 2015 BOTW, at /field-station/the-state-of-the-monarch/).  The only cushion against mortality factors like that is to maintain a huge population.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service tells us that “nearly a billion monarchs have vanished from the overwintering sites since 1990,” and according to a recent article in USA Today, “A 2016 study by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that because of ongoing low population levels, there is an 11% to 57% risk that the eastern monarch migration could collapse within the next 20 years.”

Not on our watch!

Milkweed has declined dramatically in agricultural areas in the Midwest, where the Monarch’s population strongholds are (the “Milkweed Limitation Hypothesis”).  Planting milkweed for caterpillars (and planting other nectar-bearing wildflowers for adults) as a part of grassland habitat restoration is a good start and it’s pretty and it can’t hurt.  Chip Taylor, of Monarch Watch, goes further, saying that “we need a comprehensive plan on how to manage the fragmented edges and marginal areas created by development and agriculture since it is these edges that support monarchs, many of our pollinators, and the many forms of wildlife that are sustained by the seeds, fruits, nuts, berries, and foliage that result from pollination.”  Late-blooming, nectar-bearing flowers fuel the fall migration and allow Monarchs to gain the fat reserves that will carry them through the winter.

Research strongly suggests that limiting the use of glyphosate pesticide use (and getting Climate Change turned around) hold out the greatest hope for Monarchs.  For two articles about recent studies, see �����Ի�����(�ٳ�������is�������ٳ�)

Finally, the Monarch is under consideration for Endangered Species protection, a decision that was to have been made by June, 2019 ().  It needs to be on that list so that legal protections will apply.  At the time this originally aired, the decision was expected within a few months, but the Fish and Wildlife Service extended their decision until the end of 2020 .

[Mildly political aside: And, of course, there needs to be an effective Endangered Species Act .  Wonder what would happen if every school child drew pictures of Monarchs and sent them to their Congress-people and to the Fish and Wildlife Service?]

Bonus goodies:

An animated map  (the BugLady does love a good animated map);

And a magical flight with a hummingbird drone 

Go outside – plant nectar-producing plants.

The BugLady

The post Monarch Butterfly Rerun appeared first on Field Station.