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FORT HOOD MONARCH BUTTERFLY MONITORING AND TAGGING PROJECT RESULTS
- 1. Installation Management Command integrates and delivers base support to enable readiness for a globally-responsive Army We are the Army’s Home Serving the Rugged Professional UNCLASSIFIED 1 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Adaptive and Integrative Management: 3 Year Overview of The Fort Hood Monarch Tagging Project Charlie Plimpton 11 March 2020
- 2. UNCLASSIFIED 2 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Brief Outline • Introduction to AIM • Project inception • Discuss methodology and data collection • Project results • Future research goals and questions
- 3. UNCLASSIFIED 3 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Introduction Fort Hood Monarch Tagging Project The AIM mission Project implementation What do we need to know? Military readiness impact December 2020 listing decision ? ? ? U.S. Army Fort Hood, TX ?
- 4. UNCLASSIFIED 4 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods
- 5. UNCLASSIFIED 5 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods
- 6. UNCLASSIFIED 6 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods Tagging Procedure:
- 7. UNCLASSIFIED 7 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods
- 8. UNCLASSIFIED 8 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha) • Parasitic protozoan • Dormant cells – on abdomen, spread when infected female lays eggs or direct contact with another butterfly or infected plant. • Microscopic, brown, football-shaped. Credit: Monarch Health (monarchparasites.org) Photographed by Chip Taylor
- 9. UNCLASSIFIED 9 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods OE Samples
- 10. UNCLASSIFIED 10 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods Scoring OE Samples: OE Parasite Load Scale Score # of Spores 0 0 1 1 – 100 2 101 – 250 3 251 – 500 4 501 – 1,000 5 + 1,000 Score = 0 Score = 5
- 11. UNCLASSIFIED 11 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods Tag + release
- 12. UNCLASSIFIED 12 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results Behavior 2017 2018 2019 Total % of Total Nectaring 938 2518 2085 5541 94.6% Resting 22 112 21 155 2.6% Flying 24 80 25 129 2.2% Roosting 10 12 1 23 0.3% Mating 0 4 0 4 0.06% Laying 0 1 0 1 0.01% Total 994 2727 2132 5853 Behaviors observed during Monarch Butterfly capture during Fall migration from 2017 – 2019 on Fort Hood, TX.
- 13. UNCLASSIFIED 13 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Methods Time Period Date Range % Females Total Captured Wing Condition Wing Damage 1 Sept. 1-15 22.8% 35 (0.6%) 3.1 1.9 2 Sept. 16-30 11.7% 85 (1.5%) 2.8 1.4 3 Oct. 1-15 43.2% 1741 (29.7%) 2.7 0.6 4 Oct. 16-31 43.4% 3234 (55.2%) 2.6 0.6 5 Nov. 50.4% 766 (13.1%) 2.5 0.5 Seasonal capture rate from 2017 – 2019 on Fort Hood, TX.
- 14. UNCLASSIFIED 14 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results
- 15. UNCLASSIFIED 15 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results Genus Species 2017 2018 2019 Total Liatris sp. (Gayfeather) 337 589 1550 2476 (45.7%) Grindelia nuda (Gumweed) 243 873 389 1505 (27.2%) Verbesina encelioides (Cowpen Daisy) 3 449 13 465 (8.4%) Symphyotrichum oblongifolium (Frostweed) 160 253 5 418 (7.5%) Helianthus maximiliani (Maximillian Sunflower) 7 109 42 158 (2.9%) Other Species 28 51 53 132(2.4%) Top 5 most common nectar sources recorded during Fall Monarch Migration on Fort Hood, TX.
- 16. UNCLASSIFIED 16 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results
- 17. UNCLASSIFIED 17 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results
- 18. UNCLASSIFIED 18 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results Year OE Prevalence 2017 3.1% 2018 8.6% 2019 8.0%
- 19. UNCLASSIFIED 19 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Results
- 20. UNCLASSIFIED 20 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Tag Recoveries Total Recoveries from Mexico = 22 Total U.S. Recoveries: Fort Hood = 6 Out-of-state = 3 Photographed by: Barry Newberger, Austin, TX. Year Location Distance 2017 Blacklick, OH 1,054 Miles 2018 Ligonier, PA 1,227 Miles 2018 Pacific, MO 692 Miles
- 21. UNCLASSIFIED 21 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com • Long term continuation. • Focus tagging efforts at different locations. • Look at how drought impacts migration pathways and nectar sources. • Investigate the different properties of nectar sources. Future Goals
- 22. UNCLASSIFIED 22 of 22 121334SMAR2018Charlie Plimpton/AIM Crew Leader/203-247-2443/plimptonc@gmail.com Thank you Dr. Amber Preston Dankert Wildlife Management Team Supervisor Natural Resources Management Branch(NRMB) Fort Hood, Texas Charlie Plimpton AIM Avian Biologist University of Illinois NRMB Fort Hood, Texas Chelsea Plimpton AIM Pollinator Biologist University of Illinois NRMB Fort Hood, Texas Email: AIM.Forthood@gmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fort.Hood.AIM.Team/ Brad Burden AIM Field Biologist University of Illinois NRMB Fort Hood, Texas
Editor's Notes
- I’m going to give a brief introduction to the project and then discuss our methodology and how we collected our data. Charlie will be taking over and discussing our results, future goals for the project as well as any future research questions we have.
- Talk about the AIM mission and our 4 pronged approach. How the project was implemented and why. No research had been done with monarchs on fort hood. How would they impact military readiness if they were to be listed as endangered?
- Our main goal for this project was to catch and tag as many monarchs as we could. We did not implement any type of systematic method to search for monarchs, but instead tried to focus on areas that had plentiful nectar sources like liatris shown in this picture. Areas that were close to bodies of water shown here. This is lake Belton which is located on the east side of Fort Hood. We predicted that this may be a hot spot during the migration because it is a larger body of water, and the fields surrounding the lake were rich in nectar sources. There was also a third factor that made it an excellent stopover site for monarchs. Easy access to roosting habitat. Everything a monarch needs for migration theoretically was located around the lake.
- We knew that we would most likely have large numbers of monarchs passing through, so we designed a capture method to try and ease the tagging process. Handlers as we call them, catch the monarchs mostly focusing on nectar sources, and then place them in small glassine envelopes. They would then write the behavior upon capture and if applicable the nectar source.
- Once the handler had exhausted the area of monarchs, or simply ran out of space, they’d bring them back to the taggers. The taggers were responsible for taking various measurements including sex, wing length In mm, recording the data written on each envelope and tagging each monarch. We tagged the monarchs in order of when they were caught to minimize their time inside the envelope.
- Some of the characterists we measured for each monarch included wing condition which is basically how many scales are missing. We measure this on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being perfect and newly hatched to 5 having extremely faded and translucent wings. We looked at wing damage or how many rips and tears were present in the wings. This was measured on a scale of 0-3 with 0 showing no rips or tears and 3 having rips tears on all wings.
- We also wanted to take OE samples or Ophryocystis elektroscirrha. they’re a microscopic, parasitic protozoan that can easily be transferred from one butterfly to another.
- We took these samples using a piece of translucent tape and gently applying pressure and rolling the tape onto the abdomen to pick up scales. The tape was then placed on an index card and labeled with the butterfly’s tag code to later be looked at under a microscope.
- At the end of the field season, we observed every sample for evidence of OE. We created a scale to score each sample based on the number of spores present. Here we have a comparison of two samples, the image on the left with a score of 0 is not infected with OE, while the image on the right is heavily infected and given a score of 5.
- The last step in the procedure is to place the tag on the butterfly. To do this, we used a toothpick to gently pick the tag from the sheet and place it on the discal cell on the hindwing. The tags were purchased from Monarch Watch, which is a nonprofit education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas.
- In our three years of tagging we’ve captured and tagged a total of 5853 monarchs. Here is a table showing the behaviors upon capture and as you can see, most were caught while nectaring. This is not surpising because they are easiest to catch when they are on a flower and they spend most of they're time trying to fuel up for the rest of their migration and to survive the winter. Our first year, we did not know how many monarchs to expect so we only ordered 1000 tags. We actually ran out of tags before the end of migration so the next 2 years we ordered 3000 tags.
- Next I have a chart showing the amount of monarchs captured for the different time periods during migration. Based off of our results, our peak migration where we had the most monarchs migrating through fort hood was between the middle and end of October. Overall males were more abundant than females during the three years, but more females seemed to arrive later during migration. We also noticed that the average wing condition and damage decreased as the season progressed indicated that monarchs were in better condition later on in the migration.
- Here’s a map showing where we captured the most monarchs. We spent a lot of time in areas that we knew monarchs were present in order to maximize the amount tagged. We also had a lot of volunteers helping and we needed to make sure we tagged in areas that were easier for people to access.
- Here are the 5 most common nectar sources that monarchs used during migration. It was no surprise that Liatris was number 1 because it is very abundant and it is well documented as a top nectar source.
- This is a comparision of males vs. females for each season. Males were expected to be more abundant, however 2019 was a narrower gap between the.
- Infection rate possibly higher in 2018 and 2019 because of more monarchs? We compared the average forewing length of monarch infected to the total amount tagged for each year. Monarchs that are infected with OE usually have shorter wings and weigh less. In our three years of tagging, those infected averaged equal or greater forewing lengths for every year. Mass and weight yielded similar results. Time will tell if this is a trend that will continue and we need more research to better understand how OE truly affects monarchs.
- In 2019 we decided to measure monarchs weight using a highly sensitive scale. Our results showed that their weight was higher during peak migration.
- Since 2017 we’ve had 22 tag recoveries from monarch we tagged recorded in Mexico so far. There have been 6 of our monarchs found south of us in Texas mostly in Austin which is roughly 60 miles south of fort hood. We also captured 3 monarchs that were already tagged. We later found out that those monarchs were originally tagged in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri.