- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The third instar monarch caterpillar we found munching on the remnants of our cut-back milkweed on Jan. 23 in Vacaville, Calif., is now an adult butterfly fluttering around the neighborhood.
We brought the caterpillar in from the bitter cold and heavy rain and reared it in our Bohart Museum of Entomology habitat. Did it like the kitchen? The coffee brewing, the dishes rattling, and NPR sharing information on the declining monarch population?
A strange new world, for sure. But there it was safe and sound. Well, apparently sound.
It pupated on Feb. 4, forming a spectacular jade green chrysalis. Then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. It usually takes 10 to 14 days for a monarch to eclose but this one took 20 days.
We could see our little buddy's iconic orange wings through the transparent chrysalis. We joked about having a gender revealing party. Male? Female?
Finally, on Feb. 24, a healthy male eclosed. We don't usually name the monarchs we rear, but this one we named "Perseverance" after NASA's 2020 Perseverance rover looking for signs of life on Mars.
We released Perseverance on Feb. 25 on an abnormal spring-like day. For 10 minutes, he warmed his wings. Then he fluttered away as if he knew where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there. Monarchs are like that.
"Safe travels, Perseverance," we called after him.
In a previous Bug Squad blog, we likened our "winter monarch caterpillar find" to seeing the Easter Bunny delivering candy in December or Santa Claus handing out candy canes on Easter Sunday.
"Mama Monarch" must have laid the egg in late December, surmised butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, who has researched butterfly population trends since 1972 and maintains a research website, Art's Butterfly World. "Evidence of inland winter breeding," he commented. "Nothing surprises me any more..." Indeed, he saw and recorded a monarch in Sacramento on Jan. 29, 2020.
In 2020, we collected more than 300 monarch eggs or caterpillars in our pollinator garden, primarily from two of the three milkweed species. We reared and released them or donated them to researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of Nevada to start their own colonies.
The magical metamorphosis, the incredible transformation from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult, never ceases to amaze. Neither does the Chuang Tzu philosophy: "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became a butterfly."
Just when Perseverance thought the world was over, he became a butterfly.
Maybe he will meet up with that monarch was saw Feb. 23--23 miles away in Benicia.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly.--Simon Sinek
How true.
That applies to butterflies, too. Nobody said Mother Nature is perfect.
If you're rearing butterflies, such as Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae), expect to see some defects, deformities and death. That chrysalis you've been watching? A butterfly may never eclose. In the cycle of life, the transformation from egg to larva to pupa to adult may never occur.
Nobody said Mother Nature is perfect.
The chrysalis is a withered grayish-brown, perfectly camouflaged on the butterfly's host plant, the passionflower vine (Passiflora). Sometimes you see a burst of reddish-orange wings and sliver spangled underwings, the remains of a butterfly that struggled to eclose.
Then you wait for one that will, one that will eclose.
The next one will take your breath away. Mother Nature is like that.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's Veterans' Day, and after paying tribute to the military veterans (my ancestors have fought in all of our nation's wars, dating back to the American Revolution--and my other half is a U.S. Air Force veteran), I slip out the back door to our pollinator garden to see where the insect action is.
Honey bees and a sole carpenter bee are buzzing on the African blue basil; Gulf Fritillaries are nectaring on the Mexican sunflower (Tithonia); and a cabbage white butterfly is sipping nectar from the Lantana.
But the passionflower vine (Passiflora) steals the show. A Gulf Fritillary has just eclosed from a chrysalis that resembles a thick wad of gum chewed up and spit out and left to mummify; several male Gulf Frits are fluttering around in search of females; and the offspring of previous reunions are crawling on the stems and munching what's left of the leaves.
Overhead, the California scrub jays glance down, as if trying to decide on their luncheon menu: a fat juicy caterpillar or the bird seed scattered in the feeder.
Their choice is clear. They forsake the fat juicy caterpillars for the bird seed. Tomorrow morning, however, there will be several caterpillars missing in action.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
--Clement Clarke Moore
We never tire of hearing that immortal poem, but this year let's offer another version:
'Twas the night before chrysalis when all through the land
Not a monarch was stirring, can you give us a hand?
That's because those iconic monarchs, Danaus plexippus, are in trouble.
"An epic migration, on the verge of collapse," says the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation on its website.
"In the 1990s, nearly 700 million monarchs made the epic flight each fall from the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada to sites in the oyamel fir forests north of Mexico City, and more than one million monarchs overwintered in forested groves on the California Coast. Now, researchers and citizen scientists estimate that only a fraction of the population remains, a decline of more than 80% has been seen in central Mexico and a decline of 97% has been seen in coastal California."
We're all accustomed to seeing and reading about the migratory monarchs traveling from the Pacific Northwest to coastal California. Entomologist David James of Washington State University studies the migratory monarchs and engages citizen scientists in his program.
Statistics show that 10 million monarchs overwintered in coastal California in the 1980s. The latest count this year: about 300,000. They seem to be as scarce as goodwill on earth.
There are some things we can do:
- Plant milkweed, their host plant
- Plant nectar-rich flowers, such as Tithonia (Mexican sunflower), purple coneflowers, zinnias, verbena, lantana, asters, butterfly bush and bottlebrush (Check out the Xerces Society's nectar guide for your area.)
- Don't use pesticides
'Twas the night before chrysalis when all through the land
Not a monarch was stirring, can you give us a hand?
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It was a dismal year in Vacaville (and other parts of California) for monarch-rearing. Of the 10 caterpillars we collected from milkweed in our pollinator garden in early September and tried to rear, only eight made it.
One caterpillar died when a sibling attacked it. Another caterpillar made it to the chrysalis stage, and then it succumbed.
"The intersegmental membranes are showing," observed butterfly guru Art Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology, who has researched butterflies for more than four decades and maintains a research website at http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu. "Whatever caused that, it opens the door to severe water loss, so the pupa will probably die."
Yes, it did.
Black lines rimmed the non-viable chrysalis, and then it deteriorated almost beyond recognition.
Lynn Epstein, UC Davis emeritus professor of plant pathology, photographed it under a Leica DVM6 microscope on Nov. 2. An amazing image.
Meanwhile, perhaps the eight monarchs we reared and released made it to an overwintering site along the California coast...maybe to the eucalyptus grove at the Natural Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz.
Or maybe they encountered a predator--a praying mantis or a bird.
Regardless, the declining monarch populations at the overwintering sites along coastal California are troubling.
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, based in Portland, Ore., noted in a news release Feb. 2, 2018 that the "annual census of monarch butterflies overwintering along California's coast reveals that populations in western North America are at their lowest point in five years, despite recovery efforts. Volunteers with the Xerces Society's Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count visited more sites this past year than have ever been counted since the survey began in 1997, yet they tallied fewer than 200,000 monarchs."
“This year's numbers indicate a continuing decline in the monarch population,” noted Sarina Jepsen, the Xerces Society's endangered species program director. “Two decades ago, more than 1.2 million monarchs were recorded from far fewer coastal sites, and just last year nearly 300,000 monarchs were observed at almost the same number of sites.” Population estimates at individual sites also suggest that the western monarch population has continued to shrink. Of the 15 sites which have been monitored annually for more than two decades, 11 had lower counts than last year."
Also in the news release, Emma Pelton, conservation biologist with Xerces, said: “Counts at some of the state's largest sites were dramatically lower. Pismo Beach State Park was down by 38 percent, a private site in Big Sur was down by 50 percent, and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove was down 57 percent, from 17,100 to just 7,350 butterflies.”
Xerces Society officials also noted that "the few sites in which monarch numbers remained stable or increased compared to 2016, include Natural Bridges State Park, Moran Lake, and Lighthouse Field State Park, all in Santa Cruz County."
We like to think that The Vacaville Eight were The Lucky Eight.
