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Just received notice that Dept of Ag is planning to spray Btk for Gypsy Moth in my area (Hayward, WI) What research is there on the effects of Btk on other Lepidoptera?
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Are there any types of milkweed that are toxic to or in general, not proper food for monarchs?
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Not so much a question as an astounding accidental discovery that might help someone else. Saw a monarch caterpillar in my newly purchased rose bush. It crawled out and made its crysallis on our discarded hose. I gently removed it and the white sticky part stayed on the hose. The closepin and clip were too big to grasp the black spike, so I decided I'd try to gently sew it to some lace and pin the lace on the rosebush. I had the lace in my hand, picked up the crysallis, and the black spike STUCK to the lace. I shook it a little to see if it could withstand wind and rain and it STUCK! So I pinned it to a rose limb, hoping it would make it. Today, it had hatched out and was gone! SUCCESS!
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Congratulations! It can be an art trying to save a pupa from a poorly chosen location.
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Is there somewhere that I can send some chrysilis to be examined or identify what happen to them? Right now
I have 3, all look different now. 1 is still green with brown spots. 1 is way to small but tried to emerge. The 3rd one turned black, I put in container, next day turned to black thick liquid. I looked at it closely with light & noticed over fifty tiny larvae.
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Keep your monarch pupae in individual rearing containers (plastic tupperware with holes works well). Keep an eye on it for a few weeks to see if anything emerges from the pupa. Tachinid fly larvae generally emerge from the pre-pupal J or from an early pupa. The tachinid fly larvae then pupate at the bottom of the container, and within a few weeks, an adult fly should emerge.
They may also be parasitized by a small wasp, that we have learned is likely Pteromalus puparum. This may be the case for the pupa that you mentioned has 50 small larvae in it. We have seen a few hundred of these tiny wasp parasitoids emerge from a monarch chrysalis. Similarly to the tachinid fly parasitized monarchs, you should isolate the pupa in a container and let the wasps develop. They will emerge from the chrysalis after a few weeks as adult wasps. The specimens are most useful to us as adults (flies or wasps), so if you plan to send us the parasitoid specimens, make sure to allow them to grow into adults! Once they are adults, you can send specimens to the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project at 1980 Folwell Ave, 200 Hodson Hall, Saint Paul, MN 55108. Keep as much information about the monarch (where you collected it, when you collected it, what stage you collected it as, and the dates the fly or wasp larvae emerged and how many). Also, keep the contents of each monarch in individual containers properly labeled when sending them to us.
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I live in Quebec (estrie) and last summer my daughter and I found a large group of monarch butterflies in a group near a small river they were on mud. I was just wondering what it is they are doing and why they don't fly away when we get near.
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In late summer the shortened days and cooler temperatures cause the emerging generation of monarchs to be in reproductive diapause and they will not mate or lay eggs until the following Spring. Rather, they form clusters (sometimes near water) for protection and for water conservation and drink nectar from plants still in bloom to fuel for the migration. The groups wait for good weather before they move southward toward Mexico. They may not have flown away if the temperature was cool (monarchs do not fly well in cold temperatures) or if they did not view you as a threat and did not want to fly away, wasting energy.
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