Monarch Butterflies are now an Endangered Species

The monarch butterfly is probably one of the most recognizable butterflies in North America. They are large, with striking orange and black colors. As of this year, 2022, monarchs are now listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). So, what can we do to help save this species?

Adult monarch butterfly

The Monarch Butterfly

Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on milkweed, a tall, toxic plant that comes in many different varieties, depending on location. Once hatched, the monarch caterpillar only eats the bitter tasting milkweed until it is time for metamorphosis. Because they have eaten the bitter, toxic milkweed as caterpillars, they then become bitter tasting butterflies. The adult’s bright colors tell predators that they are toxic and unappetizing.

Just like all butterflies, the monarch’s life cycle (egg – caterpillar – chrysalis – butterfly) entails the magical process of metamorphosis. But unique to monarchs, they spend multiple generations in North America during the summer months. These generations have an adult lifespan of 4-5 weeks. The late summer generation will live 5-7 times longer and travel thousands of miles to overwintering sites in Mexico. In central Mexico, tens of millions of monarchs overwinter in less than 20 sites. The combination of temperature and humidity are ideal for these butterflies to huddle together in dense groups throughout the winter. They survive on their fat reserves until spring. In late February and early March, they mate and begin the long journey north. Many make it to Texas where they lay their eggs. The next generation will continue the migration northward. This continues as far north as Canada in May or June. Then, as summer comes to a close the butterflies begin to migrate back to the overwintering spots. Despite how delicate and small the butterflies are, they will fly as high as 4,000 feet in the air, gliding on thermals, and traveling around 12 miles an hour.

Monarch caterpillar on milkweed

Population Numbers Have Been Decreasing Since the 1970s

Amazingly, it is estimated around 970 million monarch butterflies have vanished since 1990. They face many threats, with some exacerbated by human activities. As humans modify the landscape for agriculture and urban development, we alter the native species typically found in those areas. We are also heavily reliant on pesticide use to maintain our green spaces which, is toxic to butterflies. Increasing the diversity of native plants, particularly milkweed and pollinator plants, provides sources of food for butterflies. A diverse diet improves the overall health of our pollinators. 

Additionally, the overwintering sites that monarchs use are reducing in availability. Currently there are eleven mountaintops remaining that the butterflies can use. Rising temperatures and habitat destruction limit the available overwinter locations. Fortunately, the remaining sites are part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) world heritage locations and are now protected.

Adult monarch butterfly

How Can We Help?

On July 21, 2022 the monarch butterfly was listed as endangered by the IUCN. The IUCN is a global network of government agencies, NGO’s, researchers, businesses, and leaders of indigenous peoples. It is a well-respected group that is viewed as the global authority when it comes to species status. This unbiased group does not have any regulatory authority, but they do have clout and they cross borders. In 2020, US Wildlife officials found that monarchs were threatened with extinction, but they were not listed because the conservation of other species took priority. Now, we can continue to work and provide evidence to support them being listed and protected by our endangered species act. 

The decline of the monarch butterfly appears devastating, but overcoming their decline is not insurmountable. Increasing pollinating plants and milkweed across our country will dramatically help the butterflies. Whether we plant small “pollinator pit stops” or large scale habitat restorations, all help efforts the butterflies.

Written by the GSC’s VP of Conservation and Research, Lindsey Zarecky

Greensboro Science Center Mourns Loss of Green Anaconda

MEDIA RELEASE
June 7, 2022

CONTACT INFORMATION
Bekah Robinson
336-288-3769 x1305
rrobinson@greensboroscience.org

The Greensboro Science Center (GSC) is mourning the loss of its green anaconda, Babalou, who passed away overnight, September 4-5, 2022. Babalou was estimated to be at least 30 years old. 

Babalou

“Babs”, as she was lovingly called, came to the GSC in November of 1993. “For those that worked with her and those that visited her,” said Sarah Halbrend, Aquatics Curator, “Babalou will leave a snake-sized hole in all our hearts.”

The average lifespan of a green anaconda in the wild is about 10 years. However, they live much longer in human care, with some reports of anacondas averaging 20-30 years old. A necropsy (animal autopsy) was performed yesterday morning to determine any obvious cause of death. Initial results showed potentially cancerous masses associated with the GI tract with infiltration into lung, kidney, and uterus.

GSC VP of Veterinary Health, Dr. Sam Young, DVM, believes the masses to be sarcomatoid neoplasm. However, this will have to be confirmed with histopathology. It will be several weeks before the GSC receives final histological results from tissue samples. Dr. Sam says, “Babalou was well past life expectancy and at that advanced age, the body is not as good at repairing itself and removing abnormal cells. This is why we see a higher likelihood for cancer in older animals.”

The GSC team is grateful for the public’s compassion and understanding during this difficult time.

James Webb Telescope First Image Descriptions

“DEEP FIELD”

If you held a grain of sand up to the night sky at arm’s length and focused the world’s biggest space telescope on that one small region for about 12 hours, here’s the image you’d get! Nearly all of the objects here are individual galaxies — thousands of them — the farthest one so far away the light from it left 13 billion years ago. The circular swirls around the middle of the picture are the tell-tale signs of “gravitational lensing,” where the bright white cluster of galaxies in the center have so distorted space and time that they magnify more distant galaxies behind them, letting us see what we otherwise wouldn’t be able to. 

This is how we can nearly see back to the Big Bang!

THE SOUTHERN RING NEBULA

Really big stars finally blow themselves up in supernova explosions. But more modestly sized stars come to gentler ends, like the one at the center of this fringed and ragged circle of stellar ash that is the Southern Ring Nebula. What’s left at the center is a “white dwarf” star — a slowly cooling ember that has no more nuclear fuel to burn. Moving rapidly outward from it (at 15 miles per second!) is an expanding shell of chemical elements — stuff it couldn’t burn along with stuff it made as by-products of it’s burning, like Oxygen. And elements like Oxygen are good things to have spreading across the cosmos, since they come in handy when new solar systems and planets are forming, like they did for our Sun and Earth 4.6 billion years ago.  

This is how the circle of stellar life goes on!

STEPHAN’S QUINTET

Just under a hundred years ago, when galaxies were first found to be collections of billions of stars, they were dubbed “island universes.” But, just as the old saying declares that “no man is an island,” neither are most galaxies. They’re not isolated islands left alone on their own. Instead they come in groups and clusters and, over vast stretches of time and distance, interact with each other through the pull of their mutual gravity. Stephan’s Quintet drives this point home to us across 300 million light years of space. The galaxy at the center of the action is actually two, entwined in mid-collision so that their respective bright cores look like they’re nearly touching.  Streaming out from them, toward their right and upward, is a reddish region where the collision has clumped gas together and is igniting a fast and furious burst of new star formation. This is how galaxies evolve! 

THE CARINA NEBULA

While JWST’s  image of Stephan’s Quintet includes the signature reddish regions of new star formation happening in other galaxies, the Carina Nebula picture brings the point much closer to home. At 7,500 light years distance, it’s one of the closer clouds of new star formation within our own galaxy. Picture what we’re seeing in the image as just the “bottom” edge of a roughly round cloud of dust and gas with a huge hole in the center — a kind of cosmic donut 300 light years in diameter. The hole is created where hot, bright new stars have formed within the nebula, their fierce solar winds and intense radiation pushing all the gas around them outward, collecting it into a densely packed ring. Where the gas is shoved more closely together,  that, in turn, begins another wave of new star formation. This is how new suns are born!

– Ron Settle, VP of Innovative Technology and Interpretation