When they are studying wildlife conservation, biologists often conduct surveys of species and their habitats. Biologists need to know exactly where animals and their habitat is to conserve the species. Further, biologists want to know the population sizes of species to see if they need special protections.
One species who has been surveyed a lot recently is the monarch butterfly. Monarchs are a candidate species to receive protection from the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) is deciding right now if monarch butterflies need to be classified as a threatened or endangered species. To make that decision, the USFWS needs lots of data on how many monarchs there are and where their habitat is.
In 2019, I helped provide monarch data to USFWS and some citizen science organizations. I joined the efforts of citizen scientists around the country who have been doing this work for years. These citizen scientists help with important monarch researching by reporting where they find monarchs and their habitat.
Monarch butterfly habitat is identified by the presence of one key type of plant: milkweed. Milkweed is a flowering plant that you might see sprouting in grasslands around your home during the spring or summer. Its flowers provide nectar for adult monarchs to drink.
Additionally, milkweed is the only food that monarch caterpillars can eat. For that reason, monarch females lay their eggs on milkweed plants and milkweed plants only.
Monarch eggs laid on milkweed hatch into caterpillars, who then start munching away on the milkweed leaves. The milky white substance found in milkweed plants is actually toxic to many animals, but not to monarchs. In fact, by chowing down on the milkweed toxins as caterpillars, monarchs themselves become toxic to predators.
Image by Lindsay Martinez
Any area with milkweed plants is a potential breeding habitat for monarchs. This Xerces Society webpage shows what kind of milkweed might be in your area. Once monarch habitat is found, citizen scientists must look for signs of the monarchs themselves. Monarch eggs are tiny, creamy-colored, and spherical shaped. I usually would find them poking off of the bottom of a milkweed leaf.
Monarch caterpillars are also found on milkweed. They may be chomping on a leaf or crawling about on the milkweed stem. The caterpillars go through four stages, growing bigger, more colorful, and easier to spot with each new stage.
Image by Lindsay Martinez
While researching monarchs, I recorded the locations of milkweed plants around the Dinosaur National Monument. I reported these locations plus the number of monarch eggs and caterpillars to the USFWS and the Southwest Monarch Study citizen science organization. With data from me and many other citizen scientists, researchers have lots of information on monarchs.
The Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project, Journey North, Monarch Watch, and the Southwest Monarch Study are just some of the citizen science organizations that collect data on monarch populations and milkweed. If you’re interested, go online and start reporting what kind of milkweed you can find and how many monarch eggs or caterpillars you see on those milkweed plants.
It’s always fun to get down in the dirt, search through milkweed plants, and find a monarch egg or caterpillar. However, not every patch of milkweed will have any monarch eggs or caterpillars on it. That information is still useful to monarch researchers, though, and can be reported. The more people who get involved in monarch research, the more data we have to tell us how to conserve monarchs.
