Records

Data recording for teachers or families

(For Records needed for Breeding, scroll down

Data recording by families is optional.  For teachers, if you are new to raising monarchs, then you probably have your hands full without recording data.  More experienced teachers should record the following data, since it will help them improve and set a good example for students:

1. Number of eggs received or found.
2. Number of caterpillars hatched (that you transferred to fresh food).
3. If fewer caterpillars than eggs, can you account via observations what happened to the missing caterpillars?  Count unhatched eggs.  Did you see any tiny caterpillars escaping?  Were there any spiders on the milkweed or nearby?
4. Number of caterpillars at mid-growth during a transfer to fresh food.
5. Number of caterpillars that die.  Describe symptoms.  Are they black or discolored (virus or bacteria)?  Do they have tiny threads and cocoons dangling from them (tachinid fly parasites)?  Do they just stop feeding and waste away (possible pesticide poisoning)?  Were they injured by rough handling? Dying of thirst is possible if you fed them dried-out milkweed and did not mist the stems. Try to account for disappearance of caterpillars with no body found.  Spiders?  Escape? Dropped on floor? Thrown out with old milkweed?
6. Number of caterpillars that die from disease (turn brown or black) or tachinid parasite (tiny cocoons hang from caterpillar by a thread). Calculate percent. Report this back to whoever supplied your eggs.
7. Number of J's formed.
8. Number of chrysalids formed (nearly always the same number as J's).  Be sure to record the date each chrysalid is formed, since this will help you predict when they will eclose.  Write the date on a little piece of paper pinned next to the chrysalid.
9. Number of butterflies that emerge healthy. Calculate your percent success: butterflies eclosed divided by caterpillars hatched.  Eighty to 100 percent is considered good.
10. Number of butterflies that emerge with problems. Problems include deformed and dark (possible OE), deformed wings (because they fell to floor of container or were too closely confined for wings to properly expand).
11. Number of chrysalids that fail to emerge.  Distinguish, if possible, between death due to injury or disease.
12. Number of chrysalids that eclose while students are present. This is the key measure of success!  Be sure to drape a dark cloth over chrysalids when inspection shows they are ready to eclose. 

Records needed for breeding to produce eggs

Good records are vital for many reasons:

• Provides the information needed to run the program.
• Gives your program legitimacy.  Scientists, conservation organizations, and the public need confidence that you are not causing inbreeding, spreading disease, or removing too many monarchs from the wild.
• Records will reveal where your program needs improvement.
• Record-taking is a good example and training for students who may someday become scientists.
• If scientists are monitoring monarch populations in your area, they may want to know how your activities might affect their studies.

You need the following records or data sheets:

#1. A log of all events and activities.

Allow access to all members of your breeding team. This provides context for all your other records. You can review it when planning for the next season, when you decide what improvements to make. You can record here general observations that don't fit on the other data sheets, any hunches you have about what's going on with the monarchs, warnings to team members like "The tent is ripped!", or suggestions for improvement.

#2. A list of all monarchs taken into the program.

All eggs, chrysalids, or adults. Include date, time, person providing, wild or captive reared, and location where they originated.  The reason for location is to prevent inbreeding.  If you are mating males and females raised from the egg, you need to mate individuals that originated at least 10 miles apart. Scientists working in your area may want to know. Knowing how many monarchs you remove from the wild helps evaluate your overall % success raising monarchs and your efficiency in reaching students.

3#. A list of all batches of eggs or caterpillars raised.

Probably you will get eggs in batches.  Or you will get several males from the same outing to capture wild adults.  Data to record for each batch: number of individuals, stage of development, date, location of source, and captive reared or wild.  Record these on a calendar to help in estimating when they will begin to lay eggs.  This record could go in the log or calendar.

#4. A list of all adults in your breeding tent and their behaviors each day.

 

Click on image to enlarge.

The purpose of this sheet is to keep track of all breeders as individuals, so you can give them individualized care. We especially want to know if they are feeding well, and whether they are showing breeding behavior.

For example, females that mate, do the "krate chop," or try to lay, are likely to become laying females.  Males that show aggression or try to mate are likely to eventually mate.

The first column includes all butterflies in your breeding tent, their sex and an underline once they start to lay eggs.  The underline indicates these are very valuable butterflies that require special attention.You can also note here any special characteristics, such as large or small size.

The following columns from left to right are for observations on each date.  At the top of each column is a space for times of feeding and weather, because monarchs are very influenced by weather. Record temperature, sunny or cloudy, and wind (none, light, or windy). If the tent is in a place where there's full sun for part of the day, then full shade, you should record that in some way (perhaps in the log book).

At the very top is an index of abbreviations for the various behaviors you observe and record, given her as a reminder to various team members.  The behaviors to record are listed below, along with a description of the behavior.

• Accepts Q-Tip with honey water by extending proboscis.  Q+=accepts.  Q- (minus) = rejects (no proboscis). This is the first step in learning to feed in captivity.
• If the butterfly Q+, then gently move it to the artificial flower, to train it that this is a food source. Placed on flower=PF.  Adding a + or - indicates whether it continued to feed from the Q-Tip or flower.  This is a more significant step in learning to feed.  Often a butterfly will fly up as soon as placed on flower; record this as PF-.
• Good feed=GF.  This means butterfly fed (proboscis extended) for at least one minutes, roughly, from either a Q-Tip or artificial flower.  This is an indication they are well on their way to learning to feed in captivity.  This can happen on the first day you capture wild butterflies, but more often takes a day or so.  Feeding to satiation, FS, might take 10 minutes.
• Flies to flower=FtoF.  Record this if you see the butterfly fly to the flower. This means the butterfly has likely learned to feed itself.  But you can't depend on that conclusion.  That's why we offer all butterflies a Q-Tip at least once a day, unless we otherwise saw them feed.
• Found on Flower=FonF.  If you see a butterfly sitting on the artificial flower when you enter the tent, especially in the morning, it's evidence that it is capable of feeding itself.
• Mates=M. Record time and number of its partner.  You can offer the female a Q-Tip with honey.
• Karate Chop=KC. Record a + or minus for "chops" or "no chop." This is an extremely rapid beating of the milkweed by the front legs that are normally invisible. This is how monarchs taste a milkweed to confirm it's a good place to lay eggs. Look for KC when the female lands on a milkweed, or place the female on a milkweed to test her.  KC+ is usually seen a few days before the female begins to lay.
• Tries to lay=TtL. Female adopts laying position, but an egg does not come out.  May be seen a day or so before the female begins laying.  It's possible to see TtL, but she never lays. Females that mate too many times may TtL.
• Aggression=A. Male wrestles with another male, or approaches it persistently and aggressively, or suddenly lands on it (not randomly or by accident).  A sign male is likely in breeding condition.
• Tries to mate=TtM. Male wrestles/grapples with another male or female, and extends the tip of its abdomen towards the other, but is not able to link up as in mating... the same as unsuccessful mating.
• Escapes=E. Record circumstances in the log to help prevent more escapes.
• Weak=W. If you have a weak butterfly in the tent, it could drown if the tent bottom floods in a storm. Promptly dry the floor.  Give it extra opportunities to feed. If very hot, it could be dehydrated. It could need salt (feed tomato soup).  Twitching may be a sign of salt deficiency or senility.
• Injury=I. Briefly describe it. Right front claw damaged=RFC. Right front leg damaged=RFL" Right front wingtip missing=RFWM.
• Dead=D.  Usually, a butterfly is W before D.
  

After the you are finished breeding, this data can be entered to a spreadsheet.  You can rearrange the rows into groups: wild males, wild females, captive reared males, captive reared females. Once they show first signs of reproductive behavior or mating, color the cells light yellow.  Once they start laying, darker yellow.  Same concept for males showing aggression and males mated.  Everything becomes clear at a glance!  Wonderful for estimating timing next year, or for adjusting your program.

#5: A list of all mated individuals. 

Include date, time, partner's number.  You want to arrange the list (or lists) so you can readily see how many times an individual male or female has mated, and with whom. The list helps you predict which females may soon lay and confirms that mated males are fertile.  If a female has mated more than 2 or 3 times, you might want to prevent further matings (as females that mate often can have trouble laying).  Once you have enough females laying, you could release most males (perhaps keeping one fertile male in case you get more unmated females).

#6. A record of eggs laid each day.

This helps you manage supply and demand for classrooms.  It also helps you plan for the following year.  Of special interest is the time lag between obtaining the butterflies (from chrysalid or the wild) and when they begin laying. Don't expect many or any eggs if the weather is cold and/or rainy.

Obtain this count from the egg diagram after you remove the milkweed stem at the end of the day.  Record time the milkweed stem was put into the tent, and when removed.  A brief entry for weather. List here the IDs of the females laying that day.  Occasionally, females lay on the tent wall or the artificial flower.  If so, make a note and estimate the number of eggs.

#7: A spreadsheet of information about schools participating.

This list is vital for communicating with teachers, managing supply and demand, pickup times, and preparing their orders.  You obtain this information by asking teachers to "register", which means. providing this information.

Include school name, name, email, phone, grade level, experienced or not, number of monarch eggs wanted, preferred pickup day, and a space for general notes.

Once information is added to the list and you are about to start pickups, reorder the spreadsheet on the computer so that schools are listed in the order of pickup.  Each day, you can use this list to assemble the list below.

#8: Daily pickup schedule.

Teacher's name, school name, mobile phone #, pickup time, number of eggs.  Rather than a list on one sheet, this could be a number of 3/5 x 5" sheets of paper that you tape to the lid of each jar when the eggs have been prepared.  Line the jars up on a counter in order of the pickup times.

#9: A calendar.

Record the first day of school, target date for catching first wild female or finding first eggs (depending on method you adopt), target date for laying of first eggs in captivity, deadline for sending info about the program to the School District newsletter to teachers, and newsletter to principals, and more. You might make a large calendar on a white (erasable) board.  Use a color code for different kinds of entries.  You could add things like estimated hatching dates and eclosure dates for different batches of eggs.

Click on calendar to enlarge.

#10: A record of disease

It's important to document disease in order to improve your operation and address any criticism you may encounter.

For OE testing of egg-laying females, save the card to which you have attached the tape sample taken from the female.  Record date and time of testing, number of monarch, outcome of testing (OE positive, OE negative) person doing the testing, and other observations such as the density of OE contamination, and cleanness of sample from dust, pollen, and other debris. Also note outcome of testing on data sheet #4 if OE positive, and whether butterfly is released or euthanized.

Keep a data sheet for all possible cases of disease, including OE.  Photos of eclosing butterflies suspected of OE are important, because appearance can be diagnostic--or take a sample and examine it under a microscope. For most other diseases, you can't confirm what the disease is, but it's important to record suspected cases.  Simply describe what you see and take a photo.  Be sure not to confuse the period of resting between molts as sickness.

#11: A record of other losses:

To improve your program, you need to sometimes carefully measure the 12 items listed under data for teachers listed at the top of this page.  If you're not ready to do a careful count, then note in the log book when you notice, for example, a large number of eggs failing to hatch (or just disappearing).  Record date, time of observation, person observing/recording, number starting transition, number at end of transition (such as tiny caterpillars after hatching). Record the suspected cause and any observations related to the cause.  If you suspect spiders, did you look under the table for a fat one licking its chops?