Making a Difference | Western Monarch Mystery Challenge

Welcome back, friends. I’m Dr. Universe. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got lots of big questions about our world.
   
 In this episode, we meet Emily Erickson. She’s part of the Western Monarch Mystery Challenge team. That’s a community science project that asks people to look for monarch butterflies in early spring and send in pictures to help scientists learn more about these important pollinators.

If you’re interested in helping monarch butterflies near you, check out these nectar plant guides from the Xerces Society.

As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Transcript

Dr. Universe

Hey, friends. I'm Doctor Universe. If you're anything like me, you've got lots of big questions about our world. 

I get lots of questions about how to help animals. My favorite way is by doing community science. That's where regular people help real scientists collect data. Today I'm talking with my friend Emily Erickson. She's part of the Western Monarch Mystery Challenge team. They ask people in the western United States to keep their eyes open for monarch butterflies between February and April. You can snap a picture of the butterfly and send it in. Emily and other scientists put all that data together to get a better idea of what western monarchs are doing in early spring. It could help them figure out how to help those butterflies. 

I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Let's get started. 

So what is the Western Monarch Mystery Challenge?

Emily Erickson

The Western Monarch Mystery Challenge is a community science initiative. So, community science means that we ask all the members of our community to participate in the project to collect data, to send us data. And that community science is a really powerful tool because not only does it help people engage with their surroundings, but it also helps us collect a ton of data in places that we wouldn't normally have access to or be out collecting that data in those spaces. 

The Western Monarch Mystery Challenge was born out of this problem that we were seeing where we have western monarch butterflies--and these butterflies, compared to monarchs in the eastern US, there's comparatively not as much data on them. And there's particularly this lack of data during the early spring period. And so, Cheryl Schultz, who's the PI for the Conservation Bio Lab at Washington State Vancouver, came up with this project in an effort to overcome that data gap. 

The way it works is we ask people during this early spring period to just keep their eyes out for monarchs. And we asked them to do this across the western United States. So, we have a really broad area. And this is where the power of community science really comes in is that we have people spread over this really broad geographic area that we would normally not be able to access if it's just a small team of researchers. So, we ask them to keep their eyes out for monarchs, and when they see a monarch, we have very simple directions. We ask them to take a picture--and the picture does not have to be National Geographic quality. We just need to be able to tell it's a monarch butterfly. And then they send it to us. 

And with that, we get things like location and date. And we can also get a lot of information from that picture about the butterfly itself. We can estimate when that butterfly was likely born based on how worn the wings look. We can get the sex of the butterfly. And so, from that we can get this coarse look at not only where the butterflies are in landscape, where we might be seeing breeding taking place and these other broader patterns of distribution.

Dr. Universe

So, these butterflies that people would be seeing during the Western Monarch Mystery Challenge are adults. Are they adults that overwintered somewhere else? How does that lifecycle work?

Emily Erickson

So, monarchs have a really cool life cycle as a population. And in the west, we have a geographically distinct group of butterflies, and they complete an annual migratory cycle. 

So, we'll start with winter. Western monarchs largely winter along the California coast. So, they'll winter in these little overwintering grounds. They'll hang out in these little clusters along the coast to endure the winter. And then in the spring, they'll start to disperse through the landscape. They'll start to breed. They will then go through multiple breeding generations, during which they're starting to disperse back through the landscape. And they'll actually go pretty far. And they will do this throughout the spring. And then in the fall, when the weather's starting to cool down again, that final generation will be produced. They will then migrate back from those summer fall breeding grounds to those coastal overwintering sites. 

So, this is the same butterfly. One butterfly in fall travels to the overwintering site and hangs out at that overwintering site from like October or November to February. And during this period, they actually enter this thing called reproductive diapause. This allows them to live a lot more. So ,they are not expending energy trying to reproduce. They're no longer reproductively active. And then those same butterflies that were born in the fall and overwintered at those coastal sites will be those ones that first disperse in the spring and lay their eggs and produce that next generation. 

So, those fall butterflies have to live a really long time, which is why that first spring breeding population is going to be really small-- because going through winter and migration during the fall, that's a really taxing process on a butterfly. Think how small a butterfly is. And so, a lot of them just don't make it. So, if the population hasn't been growing, and they've just been kind of diminishing during this period, by the spring, we're going to have the lowest population numbers.

Dr. Universe

What do they do while they're overwintering? Do they just hang out and snuggle up? Do they eat?

Emily Erickson

They do mostly hang out snuggle up. They will kind of disperse, especially on warmer days, to go get nectar. But mostly the name of the game is just surviving until spring.

Dr. Universe

And are these butterflies that only eat one specific plant?

Emily Erickson

Yes, so monarchs have a really cool ecology where they specifically eat plants in the genus that's called Asclepius. It's the milkweeds. And so, there are several different species of milkweeds that are native to the west coast. But monarch caterpillars can only eat plants of this group. 

And they have this really cool association where the milkweeds actually have this toxic compound that the caterpillars are able to eat it and it doesn't harm them as it would other insects that might be eating this plant. And it actually helps protect them. Because when they eat this, then they have that compounds in their bodies. And when something like a bird tries to eat them, it makes that bird sick. So, they have this really cool, long coevolved association with milkweeds. 

Dr. Universe

That's so cool. Is it correct that it works so well that there are butterflies that mimic the monarchs?

Emily Erickson

Yeah, we do see that there's mimicry of monarchs. A viceroy is one on the west coast that you would see that's mimicking monarchs. Well, it's not as common. But that's a really effective strategy that a lot of different animals use. If you're not going to be something that makes other animals sick When they eat you, you want to look like something that makes them sick. So maybe they see you, and they think: I don't even want to bother.

Dr. Universe

So, if somebody is participating in the Western Monarch Mystery Challenge, do they need to be able to tell for sure it's a monarch--or just if they think it might be, snap a picture and let the experts figure it out?

Emily Erickson

That's why you have a bunch of people like myself and the really great team that works on the mystery challenge who goes through each of those photos very carefully, and checks to see if it's a monarch. We actually got a lot of photos that aren't monarchs. We still love seeing them. It's always fun to see what butterflies people have in their backyard. 

But we would prefer if people just take a photo if they see one, and we'll figure out if it's a monarch or not. 

Dr. Universe

So, people can take pictures if they just happen to see a monarch. If they wanted to go out looking for them, what kind of places should they go? 

That's a great question. The cool thing about monarchs is they seem to be in a lot of different places. We see them a lot in the city, which is really interesting, because a lot of people like to garden with milkweeds. We actually get a lot of data from the city. 

The places that we really want more data out of are those places that people aren't in as much. So, we really tried to encourage folks these last few years to look for monarchs when they're out vacating, when they're out camping, because those are the places where we really have the least amount of data. And it's hard to know when you don't have data, if it's because the monarchs aren't using that space? Or is it because people aren't thinking to record data on monarchs when they're out in those environments. 

So, we really encourage people to kind of keep our challenge in mind, especially when they are out enjoying that early spring sunshine and recreating out in their natural spaces. So, the more people who are out looking for monarchs, the better--especially when they're out hiking or camping or having a picnic at their local park.

Dr. Universe

Are you worried about things like climate change? Or maybe the butterflies and the milkweed not showing up at the same time? Are those things to be worried about?

Emily Erickson

As someone who works in conservation, it's hard to not always be worried about climate change. You know, with monarchs, there's no reason to think that there isn't some impact of climate on the timing of milkweeds and monarchs. I mean, we've seen it this year in California. We had a really cold year, and so everything was all kind of out of whack. We had the milkweeds showing up early and the monarchs showing up late. 

But it's actually interesting. So, we've done--or researchers in this field not myself personally-- have done a lot of analysis on like, what's the bigger driver? Is it habitat loss? Is it climate? But for monarchs, some of the primary drivers that we're more concerned about is loss of overwintering habitat along the coast and pesticide use in their breeding range. 

For people who are looking to be involved in supporting monarchs, that's a really tangible thing that we can contribute to. Of course, we should also all be contributing our best to mitigate climate change. But that a big daunting task. A lot of the things that we can do for monarchs and for pollinators broadly, is to protect and support the habitats that they use. So that means planting milkweed, which is a really fun one, because you put milkweeds in your garden, maybe you get to see monarchs. Some people love that. 

And milkweeds support a lot of other insects. A lot of insects love collecting nectar from milkweeds. So, you can put your milkweed in your garden, you can see all the other things, the flies, the beetles that come use it. Monarchs also need nectar plants. And that's something that we don't typically think of when we're gardening for monarchs. We think so much about milkweeds. Planting native nectar plants is one of the better things that you can do for butterflies and just for pollinators broadly.

Dr. Universe

So how did it go this last challenge?

Emily Erickson

It was great. Yeah, these last few years, we've gotten more traction. We've had more participation. They've been great. Before I signed on with you, I was calculating how many observations roughly we have. But we have in the magnitudes of the low hundreds of observations this year. Of course, we have to do some more data cleaning. And ultimately, we ended up removing the cities from a lot of our observations. We'll see how many we end up from there. 

But in the last four years, we've really broadly increased the amount of data on monarchs during this really critical period. You know, I think, in large part, that's also just due to people being more aware of monarchs. People wanting to help. People looking for community science projects like ours. We use the database iNaturalist pretty heavily. That's where we get a lot of our data, and usership of iNaturalist has increased. So, I don't think it's just the mystery challenge. But I would like to think that a lot of our advertising and promoting and educational efforts have had some effect of increasing the amount of data during this time. 

And so, it actually now feels like at this point, maybe it's less of a mystery where monarchs are doing during this period. We do see evidence of breeding taking place during this early part of the year. And it seems to be happening first close to the coast and then heading inland. Our data seems to stop at about the Sierra Nevadas, which makes sense. If we're talking about up until mid April, it's still pretty snowy in the Sierras. So, it makes sense that they kind of stopped at the foothills during that time. 

And so that's really great because that's a broad range. But it shows us where we can start doing more targeted monitoring and do more systematic comparisons of habitat use during this period. And broadly, it can help us kind of understand, okay, where do we need to be thinking about planting milkweed and particularly milkweeds that are up during this early time of the year. So, lots of them are native milkweed. They have different phenology. So, phenology is the time of year when they are growing. And some of them come up in the early spring. Some come up later this summer. Some come up in fall. And having those kind of milkweeds that are active at different times of the year or providing resources at different times of the year is important for supporting that long season breeding. 

But we really need to be thinking of we're talking about this early spring period, what are those milkweeds that come up during the first part of the year? What are the first milkweeds to emerge? And so now we have a better idea of thinking, Okay, we have this evidence that there might be breeding happening during this broad geographic range during the early part of the spring. This is where we need to start thinking about protecting habitat and restoring habitat and particularly thinking about those early season milkweed species.

Dr. Universe

Other than just being so beautiful, what are the reasons that we should protect monarchs?

Emily Erickson

I think there's several tiers to this. I mean, monarchs have a really incredible ecology, and their migration is something that is both incredibly culturally important and is just an incredible phenomenon. We have a duty to protect species because they are species that live in this world. I feel very strongly about that, particularly because many of these species are declining because of human activities. So, we have this responsibility to do our best to support these things that we have impacted.

Beyond that, monarch butterflies are one of our pollinator species, and pollinators are really important for supporting the biodiversity of our planet. Monarchs are not our only pollinators. They're perhaps one of the most visible, showy ones. But bees are pollinators. Flies are pollinators. Beetles can be pollinators. Moths are really important pollinators. Lots of other butterfly species. And so, monarchs play this critical role in supporting our ecosystems. 

But also, if we think about the things that we do to support monarch butterflies, which are planting milkweeds, planting flower gardens, protecting habitat, think of all of the other things that live in those habitats that we are protecting when we protect our monarch butterflies.

Dr. Universe

I've been asking all the scientists I talked to if you experience anxiety about climate change and what you do to manage that?

Emily Erickson

That's a great question. The short answer is yes. When you work in a field where you are constantly reminded of the impacts that we have on our planet, it's harder to ignore it. And then you see the pace at which change happens, which it's like, Oh, my gosh, this needed to happen 50 years ago to have the effects that we really need, it does inspire a huge amount of anxiety. But you can't live in that anxiety. 

I think that there are examples that we can see where nature is resilient, and we've done a lot to neglect our environment. But in those cases where we give it the care that it needs or we protect those habitats, where we steward the lands in the way that it has historically been stewarded, you can see that nature is able to come back, and it can be resilient. And that's a really powerful thing. So that gives me hope. 

Maybe the hope comes from talking to the people who are on the ground, who are managing habitat, who are really putting their lives and their hearts and their souls into these protection efforts. And I think that is such a powerful force. And there's things like monarchs. They really do inspire that forward movement. I think the progress of conservation is in very good hands.

Dr. Universe

That's all for this episode, friends. Be sure to check the show notes for links to milkweed and nectar plants you can grow to help monarchs and other pollinators where you live. Big thanks to Emily Erickson for giving us a window into community science. 

As always, if you've got a question for me, you can submit it at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. That's a s k d r u n i v e r s e dot wsu dot edu. Who knows where your questions will take us next.