Gathering of Monarch Butterflies Said to Be Unique

Some residents of Ashley and Chicot counties had the chance to observe something that may be unique when possibly as many as 100,000 monarch butterflies converged east of Wilmot this past week.

Dr. Jim Edson, who teaches geology at the University of Arkansas-Monticello, but who has as his avocation monarch butterflies, said that the butterflies arrived in the area the weekend of October 7. By Tuesday of this past week, there were thousands congregated along a row of trees about ten miles east of Wilmot and about a mile north of Highway 52. The line of trees is adjacent to a field where small hardwoods have been planted, and the field is filled with goldenrod.

Flocks of monarch butterflies converge on limbs east of Wilmot this past week.

"I don't know how to estimate the numbers, but the tree line is about 0.5 miles long and all of the trees were full of monarchs. I haven't seen anything like it except in Mexico. There could have been anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 butterflies," Edson told Journey North, one of the web sites which tracks the annual migration of the monarchs.

He also said that as far as he knows, the gathering was unique. Edson has gone to Mexico five times to view the wintering monarch population, and said that he had never seen such a gathering of monarchs except in Mexico.

According to the Journey North web site, the congregation in Southeast Arkansas was the largest gathering of the season with perhaps as many as 100,000 butterflies resting and refueling. The monarchs were as thick as 100 per square meter on the farm conservation land there. The monarchs were just traveling through Southeast Arkansas on their way to their wintering grounds in the mountains of Mexico.

Dr. Jim Edson with one of the butterflies he captured.

Edson was in El Dorado on Wednesday afternoon to deliver a program on monarch butterflies to students there when he received word of the concentration east of Wilmot. He went to the field that afternoon, and he then returned on Friday morning to capture and tag some of the butterflies.

"I have never seen anything like this in Arkansas," he said, "or even heard reports of it," adding that sometimes there are large concentrations in Kansas and Oklahoma, which is a main flyway for the butterflies.

Dr. Edson said that the butterflies east of Wilmot were probably born in September. Those butterflies are certainly now on their way to the wintering grounds in Mexico, about 200 miles west of Mexico City. The monarchs, he said, winter in a fir and pine forest at altitudes of 10,000 to 11,000 feet. In spite of that altitude, Dr. Edson said that the temperatures are in the forties and fifties, and there is only rarely a freeze which would kill them.

After the females lay eggs, they will die, and a new generation will hatch, reaching adult stage in about 30 days. In the winter, he said, the butterflies have a life span of up to eight months, but in the summer that life span may be only three to four weeks as an adult butterfly.

In the spring, the butterflies gradually move north, breeding along the way as milkweed grows. Monarchs rely on milkweed as the site for their eggs. The butterflies should be back in the Southeast Arkansas around mid-March to early April, Edson said, as they travel north to their summer grounds.

A butterfly poses with its new tag on a goldenrod.

In all, the butterflies travel up to 3,000 miles from the northern part of the U. S. and Canada to their wintering grounds. Edson said that he had captured one monarch which had been tagged a day earlier in Illinois and that had covered 500 miles in one day, possibly blown along with a strong wind.

The butterflies east of Wilmot were feeding on goldenrod, and they had been eating well. Dr. Edson said that one captured there weighed almost one gram, with others in the .8 to .9 gram range. Normally, the monarchs weigh about six-tenths of a gram.

Trained as a geologist, Dr. Edson teaches a class for elementary teachers to aid them in instructing their students in science. He said he was looking for projects which the teachers and their pupils could do when he became involved with monarch butterflies.

While in the field on Friday morning, Dr. Edson netted and tagged some of the few monarchs which remained along the tree line and in the adjoining field of goldenrod. He also placed small tags on the underside of the wings. The unique numbers on the tags are recorded according to date, location and sex, and if someone else captures one of the tagged butterflies, the central registry helps provide information on where the monarch has traveled and how long it took. Tracking the individual butterflies is a means by which scientists hope to gather additional information as to how whole groups of monarchs migrate.

In addition to those butterflies caught on Friday, on Wednesday night, Carl Jeffers netted an estimated 500 butterflies which he gave to Edson for weighing, measuring and tagging.

By Friday, only a few of the butterflies remained at the site east of Wilmot. Dr. Edson, however, planned to remain at the site a good part of the day, hoping that a northeasterly breeze might bring in some more of the brightly-colored monarchs for capture and study.

According to the Monarch Watch web site, maintained by the University of Kansas, "In all the world, no butterflies migrate like the Monarchs of North America. They travel much farther than all other tropical butterflies, up to three thousand miles. They are the only butterflies to make such a long, two way migration every year. Amazingly, they fly in masses to the same winter roosts, often to the exact same trees. Their migration is more the type we expect from birds or whales. However, unlike birds and whales, individuals only make the round-trip once. It is their children's grandchildren that return south the following fall.

"When the late summer and early fall Monarchs emerge from their pupae, or chrysalides, they are biologically and behaviorally different from those emerging in the summer. The shorter days and cooler air of late summer trigger changes. Even though these butterflies look like summer adults, they won't mate or lay eggs until the following spring. Instead, their small bodies prepare for a strenuous flight. Otherwise solitary animals, they often cluster at night while moving ever southward. If they linger too long, they won't be able to make the journey; because they are cold-blooded, they are unable to fly in cold weather. Fat, stored in the abdomen, is a critical element of their survival for the winter. This fat not only fuels their flight of one to three thousand miles, but must last until the next spring when they begin the flight back north. As they migrate southwards, Monarchs stop to nectar, and they actually gain weight during the trip! Some researchers think that Monarchs conserve their "fuel" in flight by gliding on air currents as they travel south.

"Another unsolved mystery is how Monarchs find the overwintering sites each year. Somehow they know their way, even though the butterflies returning to Mexico or California each fall are the great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the previous spring. No one knows exactly how their homing system works; it is another of the many unanswered questions in the butterfly world.

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Gathering of Monarch Butterflies Said to Be Unique

Some residents of Ashley and Chicot counties had the chance to observe something that may be unique when possibly as many as 100,000 monarch butterflies converged east of Wilmot this past week.

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