2008 Tags – Going Fast!

The 2008 monarch tagging season is upon us!

Many of you ordered early and have already received your tagging kits – if you haven’t ordered yet there is still time, but the 2008 Monarch Watch Tagging Kits are going fast. If you would like to participate in the 2008 season tagging this fall, please place your order for tags as soon as possible so that you don’t miss out.

Monarch Tagging Kits are only shipped to areas east of the Rocky Mountains.

As usual, each tagging kit includes a set of specially manufactured monarch butterfly tags (you specify quantity), a datasheet, tagging instructions, and additional monarch/migration information. Standard Tagging Kits for the 2008 season start at only $15 and include your choice of 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, or 500 tags. Sets of 20 Mini Tagging Kits (5 tags each) are available for $40 – for Nature Center programs, etc. that would like to distribute a small number of tags to participants.

Tagging Kits and other materials (don’t forget to pick up a butterfly net!) are available via the Monarch Watch Shop online at Shop.MonarchWatch.org

HAPPY TAGGING!

Where are the monarchs??

“Where are the monarchs?” has been a common question asked of us over the last month or so and the following is the best answer I can provide at this time.

Thanks to all of you who have contacted us with your assessments of the status of the monarch population. The vast majority of reports indicate that the monarch population appears to be much lower than normal. Most of these observations have been from areas where the monarchs are between broods and sightings of adults are usually low in early and mid July. So, this aspect of the reports is not alarming. The general absence (or low numbers) of larvae, as indicated in many reports, is of greater concern. The larvae present now mature into adults in late July and early August. These butterflies produce the offspring (from eggs generally laid from the 20th of July to the 10th of August) that become the butterflies that join the fall migration. Again, with few exceptions, unless you are all missing something out there, the number of reproducing adults over the next three weeks will be low, to be followed by a relatively small migratory generation. This assessment could be wrong of course and let’s hope that this is the case.

Assuming our collective assessments are, in fact, correct and that the population is low, how do we account for the lower than expected number of monarchs?

Here is what I know about the monarch population (December 2007 to the present):

1. The overwintering population in Mexico measured 4.61 hectares, a bit lower than the average of about 6 hectares in recent years, but not alarmingly so.

2. Although mortality during the winter was higher than normal at one location on Cerro Pelon, overwintering mortality appeared to be normal at other locations.

3. Examination of monarchs at several colonies at the end of the season showed them to be in remarkable condition with large numbers of nearly immaculate butterflies with large fat bodies. The proportion of monarchs in poor condition appeared to be lower than normal.

4. The migration into Texas appeared to be quite good, although a bit delayed. Some monarchs lingered at the overwintering sites as late as the first week of April. Various observers in Texas reported large numbers of returning adults and others subsequently reported large numbers of larvae on milkweeds in pastures south of Dallas.

5. March temperatures in Texas were neither too hot nor too cold and the simple temperature based model I’m developing suggested at that time that the overwintering population might be as high as 8 hectares. All appeared to be well in Texas and on track to produce a large number of first generation monarchs that could colonize the northern breeding grounds.

6. The first generation monarchs usually pass through Kansas from the last few days of April through the first week of June. During good years, the movement of first generation monarchs through this area can be quite conspicuous with many of the passing monarchs stopping to lay eggs on the blooming milkweeds. There was no obvious “flow” of first generation monarchs through the area this year and relatively few eggs and larvae were found on milkweeds in May and early June.

7. This observation gives rise to two questions: a) was the first generation much smaller than expected? and b) are there other explanations for the relatively low numbers of monarchs that reached the northern breeding grounds? Or, is the explanation some composite of these two possibilities?

8. At this point there is no way to assess the success of the first generation in Texas and other southern states. If the fire ant population was higher than it has been in recent years, predation by these ants could have had an impact. However, I don’t think the ants are widespread or abundant enough to have a large-scale impact on the population. The weather during March and early April in Texas was favorable for reproduction so I’m inclined to look to another cause.

9. May, the moving month for first generation monarchs, was cold – throughout the entire northern breeding range. It was also a period of frequent storms and heavy rains, particularly during the second half of May. Early June also saw heavy rains, especially in the east north central and central portions of the country.

10. In spite of these limiting conditions, bursts of monarchs reached some northern breeding areas, notably Iowa, parts of Ontario, and southern New England.

11. So, how could the May and early June conditions have limited the monarchs? In a few words, by: a) limiting dispersal, b) reducing egg laying, and c) increasing mortality of adults. All together such effects result in a reduction of the potential fecundity of the generation and the “realized fecundity” is lower than expected. The impact of lower temperatures and heavy rains on survival of larvae are unknown but might also have reduced the population.

12. What about the future? The monarchs could surprise us. If temperatures are moderate for the remainder of the summer and a substantial number of eggs are laid from 20 July to 10 August, the population could rebound.

13. As a number of you have pointed out, this year is not a good year for butterflies in general. This means that the parasites and predators that make a living feeding on a broad range of lepidopterous larvae are starving or not reproducing in good numbers. If parasites and predators are low, the result could be that there will be a reduction in the loss of monarch larvae during the last generation giving rise to a larger migratory population that seems to be indicated at this time.

Based on what we know now, my expectation is that the overwintering population in Mexico will be lower than the 4.61 hectares measured last year. As always, I hope my predictions are overly pessimistic.

Spring Open House & Plant Fund Raiser

Everyone is invited to join us this Saturday (May 10th 2008 8am-3pm) for what very well may be our last Spring Open House and Plant Fund Raiser at our current location on KU’s West Campus.

This year’s event will feature activities for children, with the special assistance of Brenda Mott from the Children’s Museum of Kansas City from 11AM-1PM. We will also have live exotic and local insects, videos of monarchs and bees, a honey bee observation hive, and 4,000 continuously blooming butterfly and hummingbird plants you can select from for your garden – and/or as a gift to mom for Mother’s Day. Naturally, we will have lots of milkweed available 🙂

We will also provide refreshments, lots of show & tell, videos and games for children, tours of our garden and lab space, and, of course, monarch butterflies!

We’d love to see you here so mark your calendars! If you’re unable to make it in person, be sure to watch the Blog for photos and updates throughout the day.

Complete information including photos from a past event, directions, and a map is available online at monarchwatch.org/openhouse/

Preliminary List of 2007 Season Recoveries

A preliminary list of Monarch Watch tags retrieved from Mexico last month is now available:

2007 Season Recoveries List

The records are ordered by tag code so that you can easily look for tags you have used. We are in the process of adding them to our Tag Recovery Database and hope to have the complete records online soon.

For further discussion of the recoveries this year, see our “2007 Season Tag Recoveries” posting made earlier this month.

If you have any questions please feel free to drop us a line at monarch@ku.edu

Milkweed and Nectar Plant Phenology Project – Part 3

The University of Kansas issued the following press release last week, calling for fellow Kansans to get involved in our recently announced phenology program.

You don’t have to live in Kansas to participate – we would like to encourage anyone and everyone in the U.S. to join in! This is a great project for classrooms, nature centers, families, and those interested in making additional uses of their Monarch Waystation habitats.

Kansans asked to track climate change in their own backyards

Monarch Watch, a citizen science outreach program at the University of Kansas, invites school children, gardeners and interested citizens to observe and record the growth of 16 common and easily identified plants through the growing season in Kansas.

“With all the talk about climate change, one might suppose that such changes would affect the growth of plants and the first appearances of some birds and mammals,” said Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch. “In fact, scientists are just beginning to record seasonal changes in plant and animal life in a systematic manner.”

The study of the seasonal “firsts” such as first robins, first shoots or first flowers is known as phenology. Monarch Watch is collaborating with a nationwide effort headed by the National Phenology Network to record the phenology, or “firsts,” for plants that are important to the success of monarch butterfly populations.

Input from the public will help scientists to distinguish changes that are due to unusual weather patterns from those attributable to long-term climatic changes.

To participate, visit the Monarch Watch blog (“Milkweed and Nectar Plant Phenology Project“) describing “firsts” that require observation.

Next, record the date of the observed “firsts,” such as first flower, in a notebook and submit the data at the National Phenology Network Web site.

“There are only a few scientists and they can’t be everywhere to record the many ‘firsts’ each year,” said Taylor. “That’s why we need citizens to help. We need observers everywhere.”

Monarch Watch is particularly interested in plants such as milkweeds that are hosts for monarch larvae and nectar plants that are visited by adult butterflies to fuel reproduction or migration.

“Studies of the year-to-year differences in the first appearances of these plants will help us understand the yearly differences in the size of the monarch population,” said Taylor.

Other groups are tracking plants important to honey bees.

Earlier plant growth and flowering due to climate change are of increasing interest to scientists. In 2007, March in Kansas was warmer than in any year since 1910 — with the result that in some areas garden plants, crops and native plants were as much as 12 days ahead of normal by April 2. Then came the “big freeze” of April 4-10, with as much as 60 hours of freezing temperatures.

“It was simply too warm too soon,” Taylor said. “The result was devastating for crops and for all plant life in eastern Kansas as well as the wildlife that was dependent on the pollen, nectar, foliage or fruits, nuts and berries that would have been produced.”

This year is cooler than normal — but how much are plants delayed?

“If we can get lots of people to record their observations, we can make sense of these year-to-year changes,” Taylor said. “Participation in this study is quite easy.”

How Does Your Garden Grow? – Part 2

Last month (“How Does Your Garden Grow?“) I outlined my intention to show you how to use our Monarch Watch Temperature Loggers to record the temperatures in your garden and how to use the data to determine the growing degree days required for different plant species, especially milkweeds, to reach particular stages such as first shoots, first flowers, etc.

The temperatures for the winter (December-February) and March for Monarch Waystation #1 and for Lawrence are shown in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. Winter and March temperatures (2007-08) for Monarch Waystation #1, Lawrence, KS.

Table 2. Official winter and March temperatures (2007-08) for Lawrence, KS.

As I noted last month, the garden is both warmer and colder than the official weather station for Lawrence. Nevertheless, the mean temperatures are similar. How these differences will translate into growing degree days remains to be seen.

The mean temperature for Lawrence for March was 41F, quite a bit cooler than the average of 46.3F recorded from 1971-2000. In Kansas, the mean temperature for March (1895-2007) was 42.6F degrees and the temperatures this year are much lower than for 2007 in which the mean temperature was 52.2F, second only to the 54.7F recorded in 1910. As you may recall, due to the high temperatures, plant growth was advanced by as much as 12 days last spring leading to disastrous consequences when the jet stream, with temperatures in the teens, dipped into the lower Midwest and swept into the Southeast. In many areas there were 60 or more hours of freezing temperatures resulting in crop losses from Kansas to South Carolina (Figure 1). Fortunately such events are rare and less likely in years such as this one since temperatures through March have delayed plant growth to some degree.

Figure 1. Cold wave of 4-10 April 2007.

From NOAA/NESDIS/NCDC

A sample of the data from one of the data loggers in our garden is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Temperatures recorded for the first 12 hours of 2 March 2008 (data logger #1).

To record the number of degree days (DD) these data have to be imported into a Degree Day Workbook. The workbook calculates the DDs for each hour and summarizes the total number of monarch degree days for each day and for each month. The DD output for the first 6 days of March 2008 for Monarch Waystation #1 is shown in Figure 2. The Degree Day Workbook now found in the Monarch Watch Forums is in the process of being modified so that you can enter data for each month of the year. You will also be able to specify if you wish to calculate the degree days for either monarchs or plants. The methods are the same but the ranges of temperatures over which growth occurs are different for plants and monarchs.

Figure 2. Temperatures and monarch degree days for the first 6 days in March 2008.

There are two things to note about Figure 2: 1) the number of DDs is zero if the temperatures for the entire day are either above or below the developmental thresholds for the monarchs or plants and 2) the most important data is the accumulated DDs (Acc. DD) in the last column.

Assuming there are no freezing temperatures during the period of measurement, the number of degree days required for each of the monarchs’ life stages is: egg 45C/113F, larva 187C/369F, and pupa 120C/248F or about 720F for each generation (egg to egg). For a further discussion of degree days please see “Degree Days and Monarch Growing Season“

2007 Season Tag Recoveries

Predicting the number of monarch tags recovered in Mexico each winter is a bit of a guessing game. If we hear of a winter storm causing a lot of mortality at the colonies, we can anticipate that many tags will be available. Following mild winters the number of tags recovered might be as low as 150 from the tens of thousands of monarch butterflies tagged the previous fall. This winter was quite mild, perhaps even a bit on the warm side, and there was only one report hinting at higher than normal rates of mortality. So, we headed for Mexico expecting to acquire roughly 300 tags but were prepared to pay for up to 600 should this many be available. To our surprise, there were over 600 tags available. In fact, if we had had the funds, we could have purchased 200 more. Adding those purchased to those donated to Monarch Watch by various visitors to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (MBBR) brings the total number of tags recovered in Mexico this season to about 670.

Why were there so many tags this year? Two factors were involved: increased mortality at Cerro Pelon and encounters with residents with many tags collected during previous seasons. The colony in the El Capulin edijo formed in a degraded forest and moved into an area with an open canopy later in the winter. This combination led to the death of millions of monarchs due to exposure and consequently the recovery of over 90 tags at Pelon – more than four times the normal rate of recovery for this location. Because we are only able to visit each of the monarch sites once each winter, we don’t meet with everyone who has tags. This year we encountered many residents who had older tags along with some from the 2007 tagging season:

Series	Quantity	Year Issued
J	329	2007
H	139	2006
G	75	2005
E	13	2004
C	19	2003
B	8	2002
A	22	2001
multiple	25	pre-2001

Most of you have sent us your datasheets and these have been sorted into eleven large binders. If you haven’t sent in your data, please do so. If we buy tags for which there is no data (and this happens about 20% of the time) it is money wasted – please send in your data!

We are beginning to process the recovered tags and will be reporting on these recoveries in the coming months.

Butterfly on the Brink

The University of Kansas has just posted a feature entitled “Butterfly on the Brink” on their website, in conjunction with a news release. Both deal with conservation issues surrounding one of North America’s most celebrated natural wonders – the monarch butterfly migration.

The feature includes photos and video from our recent trip to Mexico, audio and video interviews with our Director, Chip Taylor, and lots of information regarding threats to the monarch butterfly migration from both deforestation in Mexico and the loss of summer breeding grounds in the U.S. and Canada.

Please take a moment to read through the information, enjoy the photos and video, listen to the audio, and then help us by sharing the link and/or information with others – whether it be via email, your own website, a newsletter or flyer, or in person.

Thank you for your continued support of our conservation efforts!

Monarch Butterfly Conservation

In a previous blog entry (“Deforestation and Monarch Conservation“) I outlined my concerns about the loss of monarch habits in both the United States and Mexico. Although my intention in the earlier piece was to draw attention to problems confronting monarch butterflies, I also made a few suggestions as to what has to be done to protect them. To further the discussion, I offer here some thoughts as to what needs to be done to ensure the monarch butterfly migration will continue.

Clearly, we need an international dialog about how to conserve monarch butterflies. Such a dialog has begun with the development of a plan for monarch conservation. The North American Monarch Conservation Plan, which will soon be made public, deals with many of the biological issues related to monarchs including concerns about habitat loss. Unfortunately, the plan is unfunded and it is not clear whether or if funding will be available to implement the plan in a timely manner. Some of the suggestions below are similar to those in the plan, while others are novel and more direct approaches to the problems associated with habitat loss.

We need to create, conserve, and protect monarch butterfly habitats – the following are suggested actions to save the migration of the monarch butterfly.

In the United States and Canada:

In Mexico:

Milkweed and Nectar Plant Phenology Project – Part 2

On the 29th of February I announced the “Milkweed and Monarch Phenology Project“. I was a bit vague about the details but can now tell you that Monarch Watch is working with the National Phenology Network (NPN) to record the phenology of milkweeds and nectar plants used by monarch butterflies.

By the end of the month NPN will have a new web page and the plants we wish to track for monarchs will be incorporated into their lists of plants that are being tracked nationwide. Finding the milkweeds and nectar plants in this list won’t be too difficult but the whole process of recording the monarch plants will become easier by the first of May when NPN completes an interface page that is designed specifically for Monarch Watch and monarch butterfly plants.

For further justification of the need to record the phenology of plants, insects, and birds, please see “Global Warming Rushes Timing of Spring” (ABC News).

As I mentioned in my original posting on this topic, to generate the data needed to make useful comparisons from year to year, we need hundreds of monarch watchers, and those of you with Monarch Waystations, throughout the country to record your observations. This project is a great one for kids. We need to get our young people to become aware of what is happening seasonally and to our planet.

Since you won’t be able to enter your data at the NPN website until the end of the month, please keep notes on the first emergence of milkweeds and first buds, etc. for now. I’ll announce when it is possible to record your data on the NPN website.