Raising monarchs inside
Raising monarchs in aquariums
Why do this? For one thing, of course, it's fascinating!
For another, though, it's a way to maxmize the number of eggs that actually turn into butterflies.
I've read estimates that only 5-10% of the eggs laid survive to butterflyhood. Parasitism, predation, weather, even milkweed latex all take their toll. Of course, low survival rates are common with insects—we'd be overrun if every insect egg laid actually survived to adulthood.
But the current situation is not normal. Most of the problems monarchs are encountering are new and human-caused: loss of habitat in general, loss of milkweed specifically, climate change, as well as illegal logging and general turmoil in Mexico's overwintering areas.
Here's more on how we raise monarchs.
Here are the total numbers of monarchs we've raised and released:
|2007||104 (51%)||99 (49%)||0||203|
|2008||53 (51%)||50 (49%)||2||105|
|2009||58 (55%)||47 (45%)||5||110|
|2010||112 (50%)||111 (50%)||1||224|
|2011||109 (54%)||91 (46%)||-||200|
|2012||123 (49%)||129 (51%)||-||252|
(The percentages indicate the percent of each gender, not including the individuals whose gender was not recorded.)
So altogether, we've raised 1,119 monarchs from 2006 to 2012. Given that only 5-10% of eggs typically survive to become butterflies, that's at least an additional 999 butterflies!
They don't all survive
They don't all survive. Perhaps these two had a parasite.
Here's a stinkbug nymph dragging away a caterpillar it has killed. I was wondering why my daily caterpillar count was decreasing! Now I'm checking the leaves before I bring them in.
This shows the scale of the stinkbug, and thus the caterpillar it attacked. There's a lot of drama in this small world.