Can we be overprotective of the Monarchs to their detriment?

[applestar]

I hope I don't get blasted for this.... It's been nagging me for a while now that the way we raise the Monarchs could possibly weaken them.

First, the lack of exercise... The milkweed in my garden is growing taller every year. This year good many of them are over 6 feet tall. Caterpillars normally travel up and down these plants. Our cats are confined in small containers. The MOST exercise they get is in the final 5th instar to chrysalis cage which is maybe 2 ft. tall.

Then there is the lack of exposure to outdoor conditions like temperature extremes, sun, wind, RAIN, etc. Garden plants raised indoors need to be acclimated gradually for about a week before they can be planted outside. Couldn't the same weakness be present in the caterpillars and butterflies raised indoors?

Finally, I read about some seriously intense and thorough cleaning/sterilizing regimen that some people follow. I'm trying to find a middle ground. I'm concerned that raising them in too sterile an environment may weaken their immune system. (This is the one in particular that I'm anticipating a )

[Mona Miller]

I have several of my caterpillars outside under sleeves. I have also raised them in my tent. I do raise many inside. They still migrate.

I just remembered a migration study that was done with lab reared Monarchs:

http://www.swallowtailfarms.com/pages/e ... s_mms.html

[windrider]

Funny. All my plants get thrown outside on the first warm, sunny day I get - even it's a 60° spell in February (I live in SE Connecticut), and that includes the pineapple I've been growing for the past few year, my pitchers, clementine and rosemary.

As for sterilizing...um..I wash the containers with soap and hot water and rinse the plants with cold water, rubbing them briskly with my fingers to get rid of any aphids or other critters on them.

[applestar]

Well, I know they do migrate, evidence the Monarch Watch tagging program. But I'm just wondering if literally thousands of reared monarchs might not weaken them as species... I mean I know that far more Monarchs live to adulthood than if I DIDN'T bring them inside. I've seen it for myself in my own garden. But the conditions that I outlined above are facts too. And it seemed like a possibility. Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble, but sometimes, I just get these ideas, you know?

Glad to hear I'm not the onlyone, windrider.

FWIW, I inspect and rinse the leaves in tap water before feeding them to the cats. When the eggs and cats are first brought inside, I give them a dip and a swish in tap water along with the leaves. I clean the frass and stained/damp paper towels daily. I've been using peroxide to clean the community containers and cages if a diseased individual is discovered. I DON'T individually contain the cats unless they were brought in as 4th or 5th instars. Sometimes late 3rd.

[Mona Miller]

As long as one provides fresh food, fresh air, then I don't see any harm in bringing them inside. Actually, more butterflies make it inside than outside. Outside 2%, inside at least 70-80%. In my yard, they are being eaten by wasp, assassin bugs, birds (birds have to learn not to eat them), preying mantis, snakes,....

[David Calhoun]

Sure, Aplestar, I think that all of us consider the possibility of what you are saying. If I'm not mistaken,I think I read once that that purple martin bird is so used to centuries of nesting in gourds
provided by humans, that they no longer nest otherwise. But when you consider the 100's of millions
of monarchs that make it to Mexico every year, and the very few (100's of thousands) that are released by humans,I don't think that we could really weaken the species . I keep doing it because they are so beautiful and it gives me pleasure.

[Wyvern]

I do not see how it really weakens them even when raised indoors out of the elements as long as the rearing containers are properly cleaned and disinfected to prevent the spread of disease.

I raise all of my monarchs indoors. I do NOT raise them on potted plants or anything like that. Every day or so I collect leaves from outdoors to feed to them (any left over leaves I put in the fridge for the next day's feeding). I have about 200 insect rearing cups with special ventilated lids that provide good traction for the cats. I prep a clean cup and line it with a square of paper towel and fill it with milkweed leaves and move cats from their dirty cup to the new cup. The dirty cups/lids are soaked for 30 minutes in a strong bleach solution and then washed with soap/water and air dried and are then ready to be used the next day. The milkweed leaves are scrubbed under cold running water and then towel dried before being fed to the caterpillars. I do NOT use bleach or anything else to clean the leaves.

I have also begun keeping my cats sorted together based on where they were collected. I used to keep them sorted by size regardless of where they were collected, but the incident of illnesses was much higher. Since I stopped mixing groups in with each other the number of illness related problems dropped drastically. And I also work to clean and feed cats from one collection site at a time and wash up before moving on to the next group to help prevent any possible cross-contamination. Also, if a particular group is exhibiting illness, I always try to do them last and start with the healthiest looking groups first.

Most of the 5th instars are moved to custom built metal screen cages (a different cage for each collection site) a day or two before they go into their chrysalis. The insect rearing cups are plenty large to allow 5th instars to make their chrysalis if necessary (can handle up to 4 chrysalis without problem). Sometimes I misjudge and they make a chrysalis before I have time to transfer to a screen cage. Any cats that exhibit illness or look "off" are kept solitary confined to the insect rearing cups to make their chrysalis there.

If I am out collecting wild cats and I find 4th/5th instars I usually like to keep them confined to the rearing cups to make their chyrsalis in case they are harboring fly parasites..this way I don't have to disturb existing chrysalis in a cage setup by trying to pull out the dead hanging cats or failed chrysalis.

If anything I think it helps to raise and release the adults in areas where milkweed now exists but didn't before. I think there is some inherited GPS tracking gene in the butterflies that they pass on to their children.

My house... took me years to get a good milkweed patch going... but once it was going I never got any monarchs visiting/laying eggs. Then a few years ago I started actively releasing adults I raised from cats that were collected elsewhere. Since I started releasing adults at the home garden, every year since I get a few monarchs visiting. And I am seeing larger and larger numbers of eggs being laid on my milkweed. Last year I collected well over a hundred eggs. This year looks to be a bumper crop again.

Same thing is happening at work... We built a new garden and planted lots of milkweed. Nothing the following season. Released adults that summer that had been collected from elsewhere. The next year.. we had monarchs visiting that were laying modest numbers of egg. Grew them cats up and released them. Last year our population exploded. This year the population is still quite high.

Last year I collected every egg/cat I could find to raise (collected over 700, tagged 550). It was a lot of work. This year because I am seeing such a strong turn out for egg laying again, I decided to just let nature take its course on the eggs. I don't have as much time this year so I am only concentrating on collecting and raising cats and babying eggs takes a lot more effort than dealing with already hatched cats. Every 3 days I go looking and collect cats, but leave eggs where they are. The only eggs I am raising this year are those I accidentally collected when pulling leaves to feed to the cats (i try to look for eggs first so I know what leaves to not pull, but sometimes I miss a few). Ants are not too bad this year. Ladybug population is nuts though. Even so with the predation on eggs and tiny cats, I am still collecting plenty of survivors that I will probably be able to tag 300-500 adults this year.

I am a month into my rearing season and already raised and released 46 adults (tagged 41), have 102 currently in chrysalis, have 140 cats (ranging from 1st - 4th instar), and 5 eggs... and it's not even the peak of the season yet.

[mich]

This is only my second year of raising monarchs. Last year I began late in the season and released over 120 with only 2 casualties - both out of my own ignorance. All of them were raised inside from collected eggs.

This year I've raised 360+ from eggs with 8 casualties - all within the same group. This particular group included a handful of "wild" collected cats; based on what I've found over the past couple of weeks, I almost have to believe these casualties were the wild ones. During the last couple of weeks, I've found 74 cats of various ages on my (sorry looking) milkweed. They've been brought in and isolated from my "egg cats" and fed much better food that I'm collecting elsewhere. As it stands now, I'll be happy to see 30 butterflies released from the group of 74. I've lost 30 of them already to parasites and there are several more that could go the same way. I've begun removing and freezing the cats that climb to the top to pupate if they don't look big enough to do so; it seems kinder than waiting for the larva (wasps?) to kill them. I'm burning the blasted little red beans the larva turn into.

Next year I'm taking in EVERY egg I come across...

[Mona Miller]

Those little brown pupae are flies.

The Dreaded Tachinid Fly
http://www.mymonarchguide.com/2008/01/d ... d-fly.html

[mich]

I went to the website and read about the Dreaded Tachinid Fly. Based on what I read, I wonder if what I have IS that. The larva are nasty 1/4" white wormy things when they emerge from the cats; it takes a couple of hours before they morph into a bright red "bean". I have not watched long enough to see them change. They sure don't seem to be alive at this point - they never move. I assumed they would probably be underground at this point (if the cats had been left outside) and the little red beans would hatch sometime in the spring(?).

Does the Tachinid Fly start out as a gross little white worm? If so, the website seems to have skipped over that part...

[applestar]

I saved 2 of those tachnid fly pupae (the "red beans" ) in a sealed container (screw on lid ever so slightly loosened to allow a little ventilation). One eclosed?/emerged in 10 days, the other in 11 days. they are slightly smaller than houseflies, but basically looks similar. I guess they look closer to the small black biting flies on the beach. Pesky evil things....

[mich]

I have a few in a plastic container - I'll watch to see what happens. Can't say as I much care how well the nasty little beasts are ventilated...

[applestar]

[Mona Miller]

Does the Tachinid Fly start out as a gross little white worm? If so, the website seems to have skipped over that part...

Yes, they come out as worms on that string. Yuck!!! And, then pupate of course--the red bean looking thing is their pupa. It can be many or few.

[Paul Cherubini]

I hope I don't get blasted for this.... It's been nagging me for a while now that the way we raise the Monarchs could possibly weaken them.

If it were actually possible to weaken the immune system of wild insect populations via releases, then humans would have done so long ago to control pest species of insects. But that strategy has never worked, hence humans use pesticides to control pest species of insects. Likewise, natural chemical pesticides don't work as well as synthetics, hence synthetics are overwhelmingly favored by food crop farmers to control pest species of insects.

[applestar]

Thanks for your comments.
Not entirely convinced yet, but you've all given me some more food for thought.

[Mona Miller]

Ever watch an assassin bug suck the life out of a caterpillar. There were two attacking a large 5th instar. It was already almost deflated when I caught them. Not a pretty sight. In my yard, the European Paper Wasp are still in numbers way too high. They are patrolling every plant, both large and small. Remember, only 2% will live to make it to adulthood. Outside the odds are against the butterflies. It's supposed to be Mother Nature keeping things in balance. Nature is not in balance, when invasive species are out numbering native species.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/137283/bgimage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/137284/bgimage
European Paper Wasp Attacking a Monarch Pupa

http://bugguide.net/node/view/351078/bgimage
Assassin Bug Attacking a Monarch larva

[Paul Cherubini]

In my yard, the European Paper Wasp are still in numbers way too high. They are patrolling every plant, both large and small. Nature is not in balance, when invasive species are out numbering native species.

True and monarch caterpillars cannot survive in my California yard either from June-Aug. due to European Paper Wasps. So residential garden milkweed "Waystations" aren't going to help the monarch population much in the summer. Some might say they could be a counterproductive "death trap" since they lure wild female monarchs into laying eggs on residential garden milkweeds where the European Paper Wasp populations are high. Out in the country away from buildings there aren't hardly any European Paper Wasps so caterpillar survival is higher.

[Summerinx]

I don't quite see how we can weaken them by raising them indoors. Do monarchs need to exercise their muscles as humans do?
Also, raising them isn't affecting natural selection that much. It seems that most larvae die from predators that they have no chance against, or diseases. When you take them in, you save even the strong ones from predators, and those with diseases die anyways.

So unless being in a box limits their exercise dramatically, and it's bad for them, I don't think we're harming the species. Anyhoo, cats seem to crawl around pointlessly even when in a box.

[Wyvern]

I don't quite see how we can weaken them by raising them indoors. Do monarchs need to exercise their muscles as humans do?
.

Well... they don't have muscles to begin with so it's kind of hard to exercise something they don't even have. They are like spiders... fluid hydrolics is how movement is controlled.

[Mona Miller]

I took my Cup O' Monarch set up and put a cup on top of the other cup. Now, they have more room. I'm doing this with larger caterpillars I find outside because I want to isolate them in case they have been parasitized. My 5th instar that I found loves the double cup set up. I taped the two cups together. One on top the other.

[Wyvern]

Does the Tachinid Fly start out as a gross little white worm? If so, the website seems to have skipped over that part...

Flies start out as maggots (the larvae/worm) and then pupate (red bean) for a period of time before emerging as an adult fly.

If you are out collecting caterpillars - 4th and 5th instars are the most likely to be infested with fly larvae. VERY rarely do I ever have a 3rd instar collected that is infested. Never had a 1st or 2nd instar infested. My experience has been cultivated gardens with milkweed are less likely to give you caterpillars that are infested with fly larvae than wild/natural milkweed patches...dunno if that is because the milkweed is better cared for which makes for a stronger cat compared to wild areas that might have milkweed patches that are stressed from too little rain, etc.

I've begun removing and freezing the cats that climb to the top to pupate if they don't look big enough to do so; it seems kinder than waiting for the larva (wasps?) to kill them. I'm burning the blasted little red beans the larva turn into.
.

Cats don't always climb to the top to pupate you know - you could very well be killing perfectly healthy cats by freezing them just because they climb to the top. Half of my cats will climb to the top of their containers in order to molt their skin. The other half will stay on the leaves or sit on the sides of the container. And I have had undersized cats pupate and be parasite free... they just emerge as midget adults is all. I've also had cats that get a little sickly to the point you think they might be infested with flies, but then they get better.. usually ends up being a bad batch of milkweed that gave them upset tummies.

You would do better to just wait until the cat has died to prevent killing healthy cats. There is a research project (Monarch Health - http://www.monarchparasites.org/ ) that encourages people to keep track of monarch caterpillars they raise and their lifecycle and keep track of any/all deaths for parasite infestations (with the number of fly or wasp larvae that emerge from infested individuals) as well as testing healthy adults for OE...so it's not a total waste.

I always remove dead cats and put them into little 2oz condiment cups with lids on over night. If there are fly pupae the next morning, I pop the containers into the freezer for a day and then throw it all away to prevent flies from getting away. If there is no fly larvae then usually it was a bacterial/viral illness that killed them. While fly larve normally emerge from cats, occasionally they will emerge from chrysalis too. Its been a very long time since I've had wasps emerge from monarchs but they always emerged from the chrysalis (this year I did get a wasp from a Tiger Swallowtail chrysalis).

Normally I try to collect eggs to raise up clean cats, but since I am officially participating in monarch health this year I've resisted the urge to do that in order to get a more accurate look at infestation data... been trying to collect only cats and leaving eggs behind to hatch and grow and then go back to collect later. There is one location I collect from that is always guaranteed to give me a high rate of fly parasites from 4th/5th instars and this year is no exception. My home and work gardens tend to be clean of flies and I just have to deal with bacterial/viral illness.

Normally our area has mild winters and we tend to have about an 8% population rate for OE infections, but the hard freeze and multiple blizzards this past winter year will probably cut down on the OE infections. There is a location I collect from that normally has a high OE rate, but so far cats raised from that area have been clean. I think the blizzard did help a lot there. I already have about 50 or tape swabs to look at this week under the microscope.

[Mona Miller]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.... incredible information...

P.S> I'm tagging at Black Hill Regional Park from 11AM - 3 PM on Sat., Sept. 4. Dang, my tent kinda of shredded on Monday and I lost 10 beautiful Monarchs. But, I'm working on trying to emerge some new pupae before for the event. Hope you can make the event.

[Wyvern]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.... incredible information...

P.S> I'm tagging at Black Hill Regional Park from 11AM - 3 PM on Sat., Sept. 4. Dang, my tent kinda of shredded on Monday and I lost 10 beautiful Monarchs. But, I'm working on trying to emerge some new pupae before for the event. Hope you can make the event.

I work weekends unfortunately. If you see Denise Gibbs or Steve Radov, tell her/him that CNC staff says hi! lol. I've tagged over 50 monarchs so far. Had 1 escapee before getting tagged and had two with mild deformities I didn't bother to tag. Gonna tag another dozen or so tomorrow from the looks of it. Wave # 3 should all be heading into their chrysalis before the weekend (chow hounds working me hard sigh).

[applestar]

Well, muscles or not, it seems to me that being kept in an enclosure that's a fraction of normal activity range would stunt whatever serves for their locomotive power.

Oh don't get me wrong, I agree more numbers definitely make it to adulthood to fly off when protected. I'm not out hunting up every single egg in the garden, but when I AM looking, I see many hatch signs but not equivalent number of cats.

I think I came face-to-face with a tachnid fly sitting on a milkweed leaf too, now that I had a close look at them in my little vial.

I've been flushing in the toilet the cats that died, though I still compost all paper towels, frass, and leftover milkweed. Freezing them first is a great idea to be sure of killing the parasite however. I'll have to remember that.

I'm an enthusiastic organic gardener and I encourage "beneficial insects" which I call my Garden Patrol, so I don't expect many Monarch cats to survive if left outside. So far I've found 4 tobacco hornworms on my tomatoes that were infested by braconid wasps, though I have never seen them erupt from a Monarch cat. Only one hornworm so far seems to have escaped the wasps, and that one had reached 5th instar in my hot pepper bed. I'm wondering if eating the hot peppers -- leaves and fruits -- have somehow protected it. DD8 (Dear/Darling Daughter 8 yrs old) is keeping it in a container to see what kind of moth it grows up into. It's been shredding the moist paper towel at the bottom of the container and burrowing underneath, and it seemed like it was doing the abdominal crunch this morning, shrinking to 2/3 the original length, so it may be pupating....

[Mona Miller]

They pupate underground. I've read that peat moss is a good medium to give them to pupate under. Just read this in the "Butterfly Farmer" by Leonard Hugh Newman.

BTW, how do you raise your caterpillars that apparently you are bringing inside.

[mich]

This is SUCH a great website... I've been directing people here in droves for information you just don't find in books.

I don't want you all to think I'm killing my cats! After they hang and J, the ones with parasites go straight and then it's only a matter of time. And they seem to be all the same size when it happens. So far I've frozen 3 that I'm quite sure wouldn't have made it.

I am hatching 3 little red beans in a jar. A tightly sealed jar that will will stay tightly sealed. And in a small fit of angst, I discovered that I enjoy the crunch/squish you get from poking the darn little beans with the end of a large milkweek branch; I was surprised at how easily they squish. Still kinder than what they do to the cats.

[Mona Miller]

I actually put out a fly catcher that I purchased from Lowes. These fill up with all kinds of flies. I throw them into a plastic garbage bag and put out another. I also sometimes net those dang flies. I hate what they do to caterpillars.