One of the recent projects I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in is raising Monarch butterflies. Monarchs are under a variety of threats including loss of habitat, particularly milkweed. Although there are a variety of types of milkweed, this is the only group of plants that monarchs lay their eggs on and monarch caterpillars eat. Monarchs also have a variety of predators and parasites, including the tachnid fly, a parasite that lays eggs inside monarch caterpillars and kills them.

In order to avoid parasitism and enable tagging, one of the biologists in the Klamath Falls USFWS office collected monarch eggs and caterpillars from patches of milkweed in the area to rear in captivity. Within 1-5 days of being laid eggs hatch into caterpillars which spend the next 10-14 days eating milkweed and becoming exponentially larger before forming chrysalises. The monarchs then develop inside the chrysalis for 9-14 days before emerging as adult butterflies.

The monarchs I raised are the fourth generation of the season meaning they will migrate to Southern California and Mexico. Once the monarchs became adult butterflies I placed very small polypropylene tags with unique letter and number combinations on each butterflies wing before releasing them. These tags are linked back to a researcher at Washington State University. If these tags are sighted as the monarchs make their journey Southward researchers will be able to determine where that monarch came from and learn more about monarch migration.

Below are some photos of the developing monarchs:

Monarch caterpillars munching away on milkweed.

A translucent chrysalis just before the butterfly emerged.

A monarch dries its wings having just emerged from its chrysalis.

Tagging a monarch before releasing it into the wild.

A polypropylene tag on a monarch’s wing.