Texas Tech Students, Professors Study Monarch Butterflies

Monarch butterflies can travel as far as 3000 miles from Canada to Mexico. Image from United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service website.

Monarch butterflies have wingspans of about 4 inches, which carry them thousands of miles on an annual migration to wintering grounds in Mexico and Southern California.

Scott Longing, an assistant professor in the department of plant and soil science, said these butterflies will fly back down to Mexico, where their great-great grandparents were born.

“They physically don’t know where they came from,” Longing said, “but they know to go back there.”

Stephanie Lockwood, a biology professor, talks about monarchs via Lync live stream. Screenshot.

Stephanie Lockwood, an assistant professor of practice in the department of biological sciences, currently lives in Waco and teaches at the Texas Tech University System school there. She said the monarchs making the longest trip migrate from Canada down to Mexico – more than 3,000 miles. Predicting exactly when the butterflies will pass through a certain area is pretty hit or miss, and no one knows exactly what triggers the start of their migration.

Lockwood helps her student, Matt Gonzales, retrieve a monarch from a net. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Lockwood.

Lockwood said she saw a large number of monarchs one day in Waco while waiting in her car at a stoplight with her daughter in the backseat. To observe them, she pulled into the parking lot of Wal-Mart near the tire center.

“I had hit it right as the monarchs were migrating back down. There was hundreds all over the place at least right where I was. We were actually doing tagging as part of the class, and it took all that I had not to use all of the tags that day and actually save them for the students, because there was just so many of them. I could have sat there all day and just tagged monarchs. I almost started crying, because it was definitely an experience.”

Scott Longing is a professor in the department of plant and  soil science. Photo by Nicole Molter.

Longing said anyone can purchase about 25 tags for about $15. To tag a monarch, whoever catches the butterfly is supposed to identify it as male or female, the location caught, and place a sticker tag with a numerical code on its wing. This way there is a record where the butterfly has been when it is caught again.

The monarch tags are placed on a specific cell of the butterflies wing, so the sticker does not inhibit flying. Photo by Scott Starr.

“There’s a certain cell on the wing where you tag it that supposedly inhibits flight the least amount,” Longing said. “So we put them on there and turn them loose.”

Lockwood said migration is closely linked to the monarch lifespan and life cycle. How long a monarch lives depends on which migration it’s making. Adults migrating south can live for several months. These monarchs mate at the wintering grounds and lay eggs as they migrate back north. Monarchs migrating back north will only live for two to six weeks.

Scott Starr is a graduate student in biology. Photo by Nicole Molter.

“It actually takes several generations to move completely northward,” she said.

According to the Monarch Watch website, a female will lay one egg on the underside of a leaf at the top of a milkweed plant. Milkweed is toxic and protects the larva and adults from predators. A single female can lay between 100 to 300 eggs in her lifetime.

Longing said an egg hatches after about five days. The longest part of a monarch’s growth is the larvae stage. The larva goes through five stages of instars, which is a period between molts.

Monarch eggs are smaller than the a pinhead. Photo from Monarch Butterfly Journey North website.

“Insects can’t grow continuously like we do,” he said. “They have to molt, because their exoskeleton is on the outside of their body. They grow and then they shed their skin, and then they get a bigger form, and form that exoskeleton, and they eat and eat and eat. And then when they get too big for that skeleton, they shed it.”

He said next the larvae becomes a pupa and then emerges as an adult after about a week.

In fall 2014, Lockwood taught a monarch lab with Scott Starr, a graduate student in biology. The lab is a part of the invertebrate zoology course. Starr redesigned the lab manual as part of a TEACH fellowship project.

Western whorled milkweed is one type of milkweed that can be found in Lubbock. Photo from Prairie Haven website.

Lockwood led the class and lab in Waco, and Starr led the class and lab in Lubbock. They connected with a live-video stream and shared the common goal of getting the students outside of the classroom with a hands-on experience.

“Whatever level of knowledge they’re at within the subject, they can still help the greater scientific community,” Starr said. “With doing the monarch tagging, that is one of the programs that anywhere from the common person that catches butterflies in their backyard all the way up to scientists at different levels can participate and help with that project.”

Monarch butterflies have been reported crossing the Rio Grande River back into Texas. Be on the lookout!