Monarch Butterfly Tagging VIDEO by Jonathan Moor

The Bureau of Land Management is involved in a unique study. We’re capturing Monarch Butterflies to place tags on their wings for a Southwest Monarch Study that we’re conducting across the West. We’re trying to find out more information about Monarchs. Since 1980 their populations have declined by 99%. (It’s a male.) Some of the speculation of why that is, is: loss of habitat; loss of breeding habitat; loss of overwintering habitat; pesticides; and there may be other factors that we don’t know about still. So this information that we gather from recovered tags that we put on the Monarchs can help inform us.

There’s a 00:47 - western and eastern population of Monarchs and they’re divided by the Rocky Mountains. There’s not a lot known about the Monarch populations in Utah specifically, but also we need more information about monarchs in the West. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service right now is reviewing information and data about the Monarch Butterflies and this data helps feed that information for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to make an informed decision. We capture the Monarchs and bring them to the tagging station. Each butterfly gets a unique number. We place the tag on their discal cell and hold it on there for three seconds.

We record if 01:24 - they’re male or female; the condition that their wings are in. Condition one is a very poor condition. Condition two is fair to good. Condition three looks excellent; the wings look pretty good. And then, condition four is they’ve just eclosed from their Crystalis; meaning they just emerged. In a Monarchs life, when they’re laying eggs and breeding, they can lay up to 400 or 500 eggs they lay them on the milkweed, usually one egg on a plant. Milkweed is the… the only larval host plant for the Monarch Butterfly.

02:01 - It’s milkweed, because of its milky sap; and that’s just one of the characteristics of the family. There’s about seven or eight different species in Utah and here in the Uinta Basin there’s probably five or six different species of milkweed. The Showy Milkweed and the Swamp Milkweed tend to occur in spots where there’s water and those two are usually the ones that we associate with Monarch Caterpillars. The other species that we have in the state are more dryland-type milkweed and at the moment we don’t know how much the planner depends on these dry land milkweed even though there’s… there’s probably a lot more of those scattered about.

But, we just don’t know the 02:35 - connection between the Monarchs and these dryland milkweeds and we’re trying to be able to monitor that and track that. Milkweed is a huge factor in the Monarch’s lifecycle, because they rely on it for laying their eggs and then also the caterpillars once they hatch out… the larvae… once they hatch out they eat the leaves from the milkweed which creates the toxic taste to deter predators from eating them. The caterpillars also markedly colored its black, yellow and white and really fine stripes all up and down the body. As it eats that milkweed, that’s when it incorporates into its system and then as it pupates and goes and turns into an adult butterfly (it’s a female) that same toxin carries with it in its blood and it maintains that toxicity even into adulthood.

03:17 - Once the Monarch lays its egg, it takes about five days for the larvae to hatch out of the egg and then the larvae will start eating on the milkweed. And, it goes through five, it’s called instars, where it molts five times before it pupates and becomes a chrysalis. The caterpillar stage is about two weeks and then it’s about two weeks in the chrysalis before it emerges as an adult butterfly. There’s four generations of monarchs that occur in a year. This is the fourth generation and this generation will migrate. We’re looking at their migration patterns and survival. They usually migrate to California or into Mexico. And so, they will live for eight to nine months down there and then once Spring comes, they’ll head back this way lay eggs and then that next generation that hatches out they make their way up to the northern regions of their range. The other generations besides the fourth generation only live to be between fifteen to thirty days. Once they lay their eggs they die after that.

04:36 - There is another butterfly that looks remarkably like a Monarch, who mimics the Monarch’s color, that’s called the Viceroy. They’re readily confused with each other. It’s not a monarch. That’s a Viceroy. It’s a little bit smaller than a Monarch and it’s got a black stripe through its lower wing and that’s really the only two differences I can tell between the two. .