The Last To Go!
by Theresa Farris
October 28, 2009
The days are
getting shorter and temperatures are falling. The last of our
monarch butterflies emerged from its chrysalis.
We decided to do some research to found out how the falling
temperature would affect the migration of our final monarch
caterpillar. We found most of our information from
www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/
We discovered that monarchs are cold-blooded animals.
Cold-blooded animals do not maintain a warm body temperature. Their
temperature depends upon the temperature outside and what they can
do to increase their own temperature. A monarch’s flight muscles
must be 55 degrees before the butterfly can fly. As a general rule,
monarchs need air temperatures of at least 50 degree on a sunny day
(or 60 degrees on a cloudy day).
Monarchs have two adaptations that can help warm their muscles on a
cool day. They can bask in the sun. The dark colors of the monarch
absorb more solar energy than light colors, which help to warm up
their muscles. The second adaptation is to shiver. When the
muscles are warm enough, the butterfly can move its legs and
wings.
We released a total of 24 butterflies that we tracked from different phases of their life cycle from Sept. through Oct. 12. Of the twenty-five butterflies we released 5 that emerged from the eggs, 19 we found already in the caterpillar phase and 1 butterfly we caught in the wild. We had a total of 9 male butterflies and 15 female butterflies.
Each of our butterflies were tagged through the KU Monarch watch program. Because Kansas is on the east of the Rocky Mountains all of the monarch butterflies that we released will end up migrating to New Mexico. We will be able to check via the web to see if any of the butterflies we have released were found in New Mexico.
The exciting part of the story is our butterfly garden that had 8 butterfly weed plants will have triple that number next year. We can’t wait to see how many monarch butterflies we have next fall migration.
