A monarch butterfly caterpillar goes through five stages or instars before it J's and becomes a jade-green chrysalis.

Scientists estimate that only 10 percent of the eggs and 'cats survive to adulthood.

They don't "survive" at all in California classrooms.

California classrooms used to showcase the metamorphosis of the monarch--from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult-- but no more. If you live in California, you're not allowed to collect or rear monarchs without a scientific permit. And scientific permits are difficult to obtain.

According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:  "A Scientific Collecting Permit (SCP) is required to handle wild monarchs in California including for educational purposes. It is unlawful to collect, remove from the wild and/or captively rear monarchs in California without an SCP, per California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 14, section 650.

Admire them in the wild, but legally, you can't collect or rear them. 

As a child growing up in the San Jose area,  entomologist Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, "raised and released many, many dozens of monarchs, as most empty lots were filled with vast stands of narrow-leaf milkweed, and we could easily gather caterpillars and keep them fed and healthy until they matured. This was an extraordinary thing to be able to watch--the final instar of the larva molting to change to the beautiful chrysalis and then seeing the butterfly develop within the chrysalis and hatch. We would hold it on our finger as the wings expanded and, finally, the butterfly flew away."

Professor Louie Yang's monarch and milkweed research at the University of California, Davis, is quite celebrated.

Yang, a community ecologist and professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology, is involved in monarch conservation science and planning, in collaboration with the Western Monarch Conservation Science Group, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, Monarch Joint Venture, Environment Defense Fund, and the National Monarch Summit in D.C. 

• Science Friday, National Public Radio, interviewed him in February 2022 about his monarch-milkweed research. (Listen to the archived interview.)
• He was one of 12 invited scientists nationwide who delivered a presentation during the two-day Monarch Butterfly Summit, held in June 2022 at the Capitol, Washington D.C. He has presented invited seminars at Purdue University and the University of Nevada.

Another feat: Yang launched the Monitoring Milkweed-Monarch Interactions for Learning and Conservation (MMMILC) project in 2013 for students in the environmental science program at Davis Senior High School or those associated with the Center for Land-Based Learning's Green Corps program. He taught more than 150 high school-aged participants. Their tasks: monitoring milkweed-monarch interactions in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. He organized and led a 135-member team, and supported them all as co-authors of the paper, “Different Factors Limit Early- and Late-Season Windows of Opportunity for Monarch Development,” published in July 2022 in the journal Ecology and Evolution. The 107 co-authors included high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, and community members. 

But did you know that Professor Yang excels at teaching and mentoring?

Described as  “a phenomenal  teacher, mentor and an incredibly strong advocate for students,” Yang is the newly announced recipient of the UC Davis Academic Senate's 2024 Distinguished Teaching Award, Undergraduate Student category.

And so well-deserved.

“I have watched him engage, inspire, and challenge his students, fostering creative and critical thinking like no one else I've ever seen,” Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department, wrote in her nomination letter. “We deeply appreciate and admire his innovative and inclusive teaching, his exemplary work ethic, his welcoming demeanor, his dedication to his students, and his nationally recognized ecology expertise. Louie has received many well-deserved teaching and mentoring awards for his teaching contributions on and off campus.”

Professor Yang is one of the three co-founders and co-directors (along with Professor Chiu and UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim) of the campuswide, one-of-a-kind Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology (RSPIB), launched in 2011 to help students learn cutting-edge research through close mentoring relationships with faculty.

“Our celebrated program, now totaling 120 alumni, crosses numerous biological fields, including population biology; behavior and ecology; biodiversity and evolutionary ecology; agroecology; genetics and molecular biology; biochemistry and physiology; entomology; and cell biology,” Chiu wrote. “We provide academically strong and highly motivated undergraduates with a multi-year research experience that cultivates skills that will prepare them for a career in biological research. Many RSPIB alumni are now enrolled or graduated from premiere programs including Cornell, UC San Francisco, and Stanford.”

Yang, who holds a bachelor's degree in ecology and evolution (1999) from Cornell University, and a doctorate in population biology (2006) from UC Davis, joined the UC Davis faculty in 2009. UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal, then chair of the entomology department, remembers recruiting and hiring him, on the recommendation of community ecologist Richard "Rick" Karban. 

In 2012, as an assistant professor, Yang was selected a Hellman Fellow and then received a 2013-2018 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award. In 2015, he won a Chancellor's Teaching Fellow Award and the Atwood Colloquium Rising Star Award in Ecology, University of Toronto. Currently he chairs the Entomology Graduate Program and also serves as interim vice chair while community ecologist and associate professor Rachel Vannette  is on sabbatical.

Since 2009, Yang has taught more than 600 undergraduates and more than 90 graduate students in his formal classes. His courses include Insect Ecology, Community Ecology, Experimental Ecology and Evolution in the Field, He has taught two National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) grant writing workshops, and the Population Biology Graduate Group core course for three years.

He has welcomed and mentored graduate students from around the country, including the UC Davis-Howard University Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the Ecology and Evolution Graduate Admissions Pathways program. “Besides overseeing the entire Entomology Graduate Program as chair, Louie also personally serves as graduate advisor for a third of our graduate students (assigned alphabetically),” noted Chiu, who received the Academic Senate's Distinguished Teaching Award (Graduate Students/Professional) in 2022. “Louie is that calm, caring, and compassionate figure who listens, engages, and helps them resolve issues. He has helped many graduate students navigate challenges often encountered in graduate school."

Professor Rosenheim, recipient of the 2011 Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, Undergraduate Level,  has observed Yang's innovative teaching. “His class sessions were impeccably organized, his presentations deeply insightful, and the discussions highly engaging," he wrote. "Louie alternated lectures with class sessions in which large blocks of time were devoted to structured debates. For the debates, Louie drew names at random and assembled two 3-person teams of students, one arguing the 'pro' side of the issue, the other arguing the 'con' side. After an initial period when positions were presented and rebuttals given, the whole class was invited to join in the discussion. What was truly remarkable was the high level of participation that Louie is able to elicit, both during the debates and during his lectures. Louie inspires the confidence of his students, and they reciprocate with their willingness to take risks during class by contributing, even when discussing topics that are new to them. This is not an easy thing to accomplish; Louie's ability to gain such strong student participation is perhaps the strongest evidence of Louie's talent in connecting with students. I was so impressed with the success of Louie's methods that I decided to incorporate structured debates into one of my own classes as well."

Yang lab doctoral alumna Meredith Cenzer, now an instructor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, remembers: “I will never forget the presentation he gave to my incoming cohort, just nine months after he himself started as a professor. He told us about imposter syndrome (the feeling of not deserving our success) and assured us right off the bat that we all deserved to be at UC Davis; that none of us had snuck in, and that we were chosen because they all believed in our ability to be successful in graduate school. I will never forget how much that meant to me as a young woman fresh out of my bachelor's with little experience in independent research. In the seven years I was in his lab, even when experiments failed or I made mistakes or felt like I was falling behind, Louie never stopped believing in my abilities. Building that trust was foundational in our professional relationship, and indispensable to my development in graduate school and afterwards.”

In unsolicited comments in Rate My Professors, his students wrote:

• “One of the best instructors at UC Davis. Class on insects was very interesting…He is super cool, and lectures are never boring.”
• “Louie honestly might be my favorite professor on campus. He is cool and smart and engaged with his students…”
• “Really one of the most intelligent people I've met in college. It's apparent just talking to him, which I'd highly recommend.”
• “I loved this seminar, Ecology Outdoors! I learned so much from Louie, and he's really good at encouraging creativity and experimentation. He's a very hard worker and plans the class well.”
• “Really cool guy, made the class interesting. gave a lot of real-life example, so students can relate the subject to real world.”

A tip of the insect net to Professor Louie Yang! 

“Butterflies are treasures, like great works of art. Should we not value them as much as the beauty of Picasso's art or the music of Mozart or the Beatles?—Lincoln Brower (1931-2018), renowned Lepidopterist educated at Princeton and Yale universities. 

The Brower quote appears in a newly published book authored by two renowned scientists who research butterflies. The book, an introduction to butterflies of the world, is a  “must-have” on your bookshelf. 

The book: The Lives of Butterflies: A Natural History of Our Planet's Butterfly Life

The authors: Entomologist David James, associate professor, Washington State University and biologist David Lohman, professor and department chair, the City College of New York.

The publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication date: (U.S.) Jan. 9, 2024. 

James and Lohman describe butterflies, which belong to the order Lepidoptera, as “the colorful ambassadors of the insect world.” But they point out that they are more than just ambassadors. In many cultures, they “symbolize joy, transformation, rebirth, resilience and hope.” 

This 288-page book includes eight chapters: Introduction, Life Histories, Habitats and Resources, Butterfly Populations, Butterfly Seasonality, Defense and Natural Enemies, and Threats and Conservation. The close-up images, many by James, spring to life and really confirm their description of butterflies as the "colorful ambassadors of the world."

This is an easy-to-read, fascinating book, complete with a glossary, a list of butterfly families and resources, and, of course, an index. 

Some tidbits. Did you know that:

• To date, scientists have described some 19,500 species of butterflies throughout the world?
• Scales give butterflies their color? “The colors of each butterfly have evolved to promote protection to the species from predators and to enable the sexes to find and recognize each other,” they write. 
• Butterflies are classified into seven families based on their evolutionary history? And that each family shares physical, behavioral, and ecological features, including body structure, wing characteristics (venation, patterning, and color), host plants, and flight?
• The survival rate of eggs, caterpillars, pupae (chrysalids) is less than 10 percent? What you see are the survivors who have “escaped predation, parasitism, disease and death from unfavorable environmental conditions, including excessive heat, drought, cold, storms, and food shortages,” they relate.  

"What good are butterflies?" the authors ask, answering that they are an ”essential part of most terrestrial ecosystems and an important link in food chains, consuming plants as caterpillars, pollinating flowers as adults, and being consumed by a community of invertebrates and vertebrates." 

Butterflies, it seems, are also the equivalent of the proverbial “canary in the coal mine,” an early warning of danger in the ecosystem. Take the issue of the declining population of monarchs. Quoting statistics from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, James and Lohman point out that monarchs have declined by 80 to 90 percent during the past two decades. The decline, they write, "is caused by a combination of habitat loss, pesticide use, and a warming climate.”

If you live in California, you're not allowed to collect or rear monarchs without a scientific permit. 

According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:  "A Scientific Collecting Permit (SCP) is required to handle wild monarchs in California including for educational purposes. It is unlawful to collect, remove from the wild and/or captively rear monarchs in California without an SCP, per California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 14, section 650.

But the metamorphosis of a butterfly--from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult--is nothing short of magical. As the authors so succinctly point out: "...our children are the future and it is they who will determine the future of butterflies. If a child finds a caterpillar, let them keep it, feed it, and watch it metamorphose.They will remember the experience for the rest of their life, and it will instill in them a love and appreciation for lives smaller than their own."

They add: “It is important that we do not try to excessively regulate to conserve butterfly populations. We need people to be part of the process and be the power on the ground behind conservation programs.”

The book could have easily been called "The Joy of Butterflies." Butterflies fluttering around the garden on a sunburst day, sipping nectar, and then laying eggs on their host plant, bring us great joy. We marvel at the magic, the miracle of it all. 

This book is a great introduction to the lives of butterflies. You'll learn more about their life histories, their habitats, their seasonality, their defensive mechanisms, and what we can do to conserve "the colorful ambassadors of the insect world."

About the authors. James also co-authored Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies and served as a consultant editor on The Book of Caterpillars. He completed his doctorate on the winter biology of Monarch butterflies and has published more than 200 scientific papers "on a wide range of entomological subjects," the publisher notes.  Lohman, in addition to being a professor and department chair, the City College of New York, is a visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, and a research associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and at the National Museum of Natural History in Manila. His research focuses on butterflies in Southeast Asia and the ecology, evolution, and conservation of biodiversity. 

Their passion for butterflies, coupled with their exemplary research, shows. 

Wings up!

"Target-site insensitivity (TSI) is an important mechanism of animal resistance to toxins," says nematologist Adler Dillman of the University of California, Riverside. "TSI evolved in parallel in the monarch butterfly and other insects that specialize on milkweeds and is thought to have facilitated sequestration of cardiac glycosides that may protect these insects from predation and parasitism."

Dillman, professor and chair of the UCR Department of Nematology,  will share his research in a presentation titled "Nematode Parasitism of Insects with Toxic Cardenolides," hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology at 4:10 p.m., Monday, Jan. 8.  

His seminar will be in Room 122 of Briggs Hall and also will be on Zoom. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672. Associate professor and nematologist Shahid Siddique of the Department of Entomology and Nematology is the host. 

Dillman holds a bachelor's degree in microbiology from Brigham Young University (2006) and a doctorate in genetics (2013) from the California Institute of Technology.

The abstract of his UC Davis seminar:  

Known as an excellent investigator and teacher, Dillman won the 2022 UCR Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement; the 2021 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Society of Nematologists, and a 2020 Outstanding Investigator Award, Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA).

Check out his lab page that details his research and his guest spot on an episode on the podcast Something Offbeat. He he discussed a scientific article on a case of Ophidascaris robertsi infection in a human brain.

Seminar coordinator is Brian Johnson, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. For Zoom technical issues, he may be reached at brnjohnson@ucdavis.edu. The complete list of winter seminars will be posted soon.