All Forum Members Post 2010 Totals Here?

[skates4marty]

Hi Folks.

Before you all go into hibernation...

How about if we all post our totals on this thread so they will be easy to total up? I know some of you have posted your totals on other threads. Can you please repeat them here?

Also, if your profile info does not include your city or state, please let us know that.

I can't report yet -- I will be reporting for the Monarchists of Anne Arundel County, and one member still has C's and just found a fifth instar. Other members are not revealing their totals to me yet; they are waiting for our annual meeting and convention.

For our group, I will report:
- total that were healthy enough to fly out of the yard,
- approximate percent lost to tachnid fly,
- date of the last release
- number of new people brought into the cult (even if he/she raised only 1)
- number of student contacts (for example, a cage in a 3rd grade classroom might tally 30 student contacts, a cage in a middle school classroom might rack up 150 or more)

[Schmetterling]

Will be happy to do so. Should have my numbers by next week, am still waiting many to eclose.

[Wyvern]

I'm still waiting on the last group of adults to eclose and waiting for a batch of caterpillars I purchased to arrive this week. I've been trying to fill in the dead time chasing down wild adults at a local farm market (they have their mums out and it's drawing in the flutters). Tagging wild adults is frustrating cause they are so jumpy and quick which is why I prefer hand rearing.

[lib66laur]

Ugh, glad to hear someone else is still waiting for some to eclose. My last batch seem to be taking forever! We had a couple cool nasty days her and I thought they'd speed up after those passed but wow ~ I still have a lot of green green chrysalid.

[James Price]

Here are the 2010 totals for my household:

706 monarchs successfully reared and released
369 were males
337 were females
16 more adults were euthanized because of wing damage, 12 of those from falling while wet, 4 from an unfortunate incident with felines

We did not keep count of caterpillar and chrysalis mortality, but I would estimate we had a dozen losses to tachinid parasitism. Some caterpillar deaths were, as always, unexplained.

220 of the total were migrants, all tagged before release
40 more wild-reared monarchs were netted and tagged

We launched two new families of monarch farmers and provided one of them with four varieties of milkweed plants for the garden.

We provided caterpillars to three elementary school classrooms, accounting for perhaps 60-70 student contacts.

Items of small interest: While the male to female ratio was fairly stable day-to-day through most of the season, on Aug. 30 and 31, 24 of 26 adults were male, and all or nearly all had come from the same female. Also, this year for the first time we had a substantial number of mature plants of A. speciosa, and from mid-season on, all egg-laying females showed a very marked preference for it in oviposition, to the extent that they would lay double or triple the number of eggs on it than on all other species combined.

[dandjtaylor]

880 total reared and released from mid-July to early October
694 tagged

About 50/50 wild and home collected
Slightly more females than males

less than 20 euthenized (mis-shapen wings, stuck in chrysalis, etc.)
more than 100 died from "Red" and "Black" death, all wild collected.

[skates4marty]

The Monarchists of Anne Arundel County held their annual meeting and convention. Twelve monarchists reported their totals, ranging from 1 raised by a newbie to 306 for a fifth-year monarchist. The grand total was 1,112.

That was an increase of 39% over last year, despite the fact that my personal total went down this year, due to Oe.

Four people I sucked into the cult 2, 3, and 4 years ago raised more than I did this year. When mine were coming out crumpled, I'd send out e-mails asking for good news. It helped to hear that others were releasing 5 and 10 a day.

One monarchist embedded caterpillars in 29 classrooms (preschool to eighth grade, at 3 schools). As you can imagine, it was a part-time job to keep everyone fed and cleaned and to keep track of whether they might eclose on the weekend and if so to make suitable arrangements. She plus our three teacher-monarchists gave us well over a thousand student-contacts.

All in all, a very good year for us.

[skates4marty]

Also, this year for the first time we had a substantial number of mature plants of A. speciosa, and from mid-season on, all egg-laying females showed a very marked preference for it in oviposition, to the extent that they would lay double or triple the number of eggs on it than on all other species combined.

James, did you see this video?

http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/201 ... e-kit.html

[ChrysCook]

There's a great write-up at this link:

http://www.monarchlab.umn.edu/Lab/Resea ... fault.aspx

"Roeske et al. (1976) showed that different species of milkweed contained different concentrations of toxins, and that monarchs reared on these species also varied in the amount of toxins in their bodies. However, there is not a perfect correlation between the amount of cardenolides in plants, and the monarchs that consume them. Figure 3 shows the concentration of cardenolides in various milkweed species, and the concentrations in adult monarchs that were fed these milkweeds as larvae. Monarchs that were fed A. viridis from Florida had the highest cardenolide concentrations, even though the plants themselves had intermediate levels (see figure 3). It appears that monarchs fed high cardenolide plants do not concentrate the toxins as effectively as do monarchs from intermediate and low cardenolide plants (Malcolm and Brower 1989)."

"Other evidence that high cardenolide levels may be harmful to larvae is the fact that females prefer to oviposit on plants that have intermediate levels of this toxin (Zalucki et al. 1990, Oyeyele and Zalucki 1990, Van Hook and Zalucki 1991)."

[Schmetterling]

2010 was my first year tagging.
Tagged 50
21 females
29 males

I released 16 untagged in 2010,
7 females
9 males

I brought 7 cats to a kindergarten class and they raised and releases them. Introducing 30 children and 2 teachers.

After finding 30 eggs in September, I enlisted the help of 3 families to help me in the raising of these last ones, and they are now hooked. ( approximately 16 people in those families.)

TOTAL : 73

This May I volunteered to share my love of raising Monarchs to my church's woman's ministry on the night of their perennial exchange, where there will be approximately 30 woman.

[skates4marty]

I brought 7 cats to a kindergarten class and they raised and releases them. Introducing 30 children and 2 teachers. ...After finding 30 eggs in September, I enlisted the help of 3 families to help me in the raising of these last ones, and they are now hooked. ( approximately 16 people in those families.) ...
This May I volunteered to share my love of raising Monarchs to my church's woman's ministry on the night of their perennial exchange, where there will be approximately 30 woman.

I love hearing about new people being pulled in. My season is not complete unless at least one person that I pulled in tells me about his/her plans to raise more next year.