Monarch Watch

Happy Pollinator Week!

This week, we're celebrating all the creatures that pollinate our world. From butterflies and moths to bats and lemurs - and everything in between - there are numerous creatures that contribute to the health of plants.

To learn more about getting involved with Pollinator Week, check out resources from The Pollinator Partnership , who manages this annual celebration in support of pollinator health.

And keep an eye out this week for a few more posts from us about pollinators and ways to support them this Pollinator Week!

Up next in our Monarch Biology Series: the Chrysalis

The chrysalis has long been a symbol of change and personal growth, and it’s no wonder why! During the chrysalis stage, or pupal stage, the monarch will undergo a dramatic transformation from larva to an adult butterfly.

As a late-instar larva, a monarch will already begin developing parts of its adult body internally, which start to be revealed when the larva splits its final skin when pupating. As an immobile chrysalis, the monarch will finish development into an adult butterfly.

Across the 10 to 14 days of the chrysalis stage, the pupa will break down its larval structures and tissues and finish forming its butterfly body. Certain groups of cells, called "imaginal discs," will rapidly develop body parts and systems like antennae, wings, and legs. Toward the end of the chrysalis stage, we can start to see the butterfly through the pupal cuticle as its pigmentation and patterns develop.

What happens after that? Come back for our final part of our series as we take a look at the adult monarch butterfly!

We have some more updates in our radio-tag first-generation monarchs research project!

After radio-tagging monarchs in Texas and Oklahoma, we also tagged and deployed monarchs in Lawrence, Kansas, toward the end of May. Like with the monarchs released in the other states, our goal is to study when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

After some smaller detections, several tagged monarchs started getting detected in different states. Here are a few highlights as of June 9:

📍 MW-KS-005 has traveled the furthest from Lawrence, with detections in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Manitoba, Canada!

📍Four monarchs have made it to Minnesota so far (MW-KS-012, -0018, -009, and -008).

📍 MW-KS-008 has been detected in four states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Read more about this project on our website, and cycle through the images on the page to watch the progress of the radio-tagged monarchs. Link in our bio!


Monarch Watch has been participating in the Project Monarch Collaboration, an exciting research project led by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center to deploy solar-powered radio tags on migratory monarch butterflies and study their migration. As an extension of that project, we've been initiating research to answer questions about the spring migration - specifically, when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

Looking for an activity for the kids this summer? Head to Monarch Watch’s Kids Zone website!

Made by kids for kids, Monarch Watch Kids Zone has interactive pages, a printable booklet, fun facts, games, and more. There are so many things to learn about monarchs and other pollinators, and this is a great way to get kids involved in community science and foster a curiosity for the natural world.

Check out the Monarch Watch Kids Zone at the link in our comments, or find a link to it on the Monarch Watch website!

Continuing our Monarch Biology series, here is part two of the larva!

Here, we highlight some different aspects on the monarch caterpillar's anatomy throughout this stage and take a look at their eating habits.

Monarch larvae will eat milkweed differently during different growth stages, or instars. In the 1st to 3rd instar, the larva will exhibit a behavior called "trenching," eating only a few layers of the milkweed plant so as not to consume a large amount of sticky sap that can flow out of the plant.

In its 4th instar, the larva will chew in a circular shape to avoid the flow of too much sap while feeding.

During the 5th instar, the larva will sometimes partially chew through a milkweed stem, causing the leaf to hang down. This reduces the flow of sap to the leaf so that the monarch can feed on it, and this technique is called "flagging." A 5th instar monarch will eat voraciously and can consume entire leaves.

Next time you see a milkweed plant, see if you can spot some of these signs of monarch caterpillars feeding!

Leading Photo Credit: Trish Place

Next up in our monarch biology series: Larvae!

The larval stage, or caterpillar stage, comes after a monarch has hatched from its egg and will last for about 10 to 14 days. During this time, the monarch will do all of its growing.

Milkweed is the only plant that a monarch caterpillar will consume (called a "host plant"). As it eats, it'll eventually get too big for its skin and will molt so it can continue eating and growing. A monarch will go through five of these intervals between moltings, called "instars," and will grow from about 2-6 millimeters to about 25-50 millimeters!

While milkweed doesn't appeal to many organisms, it does to monarchs! As a monarch caterpillar eats milkweed, it'll do something extraordinary and sequester some of the toxins in the milkweed within itself. This will make the caterpillar distasteful to many vertebrate predators, creating some protection around the caterpillar at this very vulnerable stage in its development.

To learn more about monarch caterpillar biology, head to our website. Stay tuned for Part 3 in our monarch biology series, where we'll highlight more of the larvae's anatomy!

Photo credit: Donna Barski

You may have been following along this past fall with Monarch Watch's participation in the Project Monarch Collaboration, an exciting research project led by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center to deploy solar-powered radio tags on migratory monarch butterflies and study their migration.

As an extension of that project, we've been initiating research to answer questions about the spring migration - specifically, when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

This spring, we've radio-tagged first-generation monarchs in several different locations to study their movement. In collaboration with the Oklahoma City Zoo and Dallas Zoo, we deployed monarchs in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and we've observed some interesting detections via the Project Monarch Science app!

Read more about this project on our website - link in the comments! We'll continue to add updates there as the research project progresses.

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