Butterflies: Featuring Monarchs

Written By: Aimee Turcotte
Zoo Educator

Butterflies have many characteristics that make each species unique: their size, shape, color, and pattern. Caterpillars rely on the leaves of plants for food before they grow into butterflies. Some plants that attract caterpillars are dill, passionflower, chokecherry, and milkweed. When the caterpillar emerges into a butterfly, it will mainly rely on nectar, a sugary fluid from flowering plants, for nutrients. While feeding on nectar, pollen may stick onto a butterfly. Throughout the day, these insects work alongside other pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds to visit wildflowers, transferring pollen between these flowers. However, butterflies are not as efficient as other pollinators in collecting pollen. For instance, butterflies have long thin legs that allow them to perch on flowers, but not close enough to the pollen of blossoms where they can easily rub against pollen. In contrast, because a bee is smaller than a butterfly, bees have mobility, enabling them to get closer to the pollen in flowers. Additionally, butterflies do not have an exceptional sense of smell like bees, which makes it less likely for butterflies to find flowers based on their attractive smell. Nevertheless, unlike bees, butterflies can see red, which attracts them to more brightly colored blossoms that are open during the day.

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​The ecological role of butterflies is significant, since these insects facilitate the reproduction of plants through pollen transfer, resulting in more flora biodiversity. Butterflies are an indicator of ecosystem health because of their preference for healthy native plants. If there is not a presence of butterflies near flowering native plants, then the ecosystem where these plants are located may not be healthy.

One of my favorite species of butterflies is the Monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies are quite light, weighing 0.0095 to 0.026 ounces with a wingspan of 3.7 to 4.1 inches. These butterflies have bright orange, black, and white coloration. The veins of these butterflies are black and vary in thickness depending on if the insect is male or female. Female Monarch butterflies have thicker veins in their wings than males. A Monarch butterfly’s bright coloration is beneficial to their survival because it demonstrates to predators that these butterflies are poisonous. Monarch butterflies get their toxicity from eating milkweed, one of their native host plants. Viceroy, Queen, and Soldier butterflies mimic Monarchs in appearance to pretend they are toxic, which makes predators avoid them.

Unfortunately, Monarch butterflies are an endangered species, due to threats to their survival. These butterflies migrate in the fall from the United States/Canada to South California/Mexico. Their journey can be as long as 3,000 miles! Human-caused global warming has made natural weather disasters more dangerous, putting migrating butterflies in danger. For instance, category 4 and 5 hurricanes have been increasing globally, arising from warmer water temperatures and higher winds. Monarch butterflies migrating in the fall during hurricane season rely on the wind for migration, but the wind gusts have become detrimental to the fragile butterflies. The World Wildlife Fund found that since the 1990s, the number of Monarch butterfly populations in Central Mexico has been declining significantly. The number of acres that Monarch butterflies occupy in Central Mexico has been declining since 1996-1997, when these insects had 45 acres of forest. From 2023 to 2024, eastern Monarch butterflies occupied approximately 2.2 acres of forest in central Mexico, which is 59% less that the 2022 to 2023 season, when these butterflies had 5.5 acres of habitat (Millions of monarch butterflies have gone missing, and there is one thing humans can do to help (bbc.com). Widespread habitat loss due to deforestation, pesticide application in gardens, and the loss of native plants has also drastically impacted the ecological health of the forests that Monarch butterflies return to every year after migration.

Thankfully, there are conservation groups around the world that focus on protecting butterflies. The MonarchWatch Citizen Science program at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo invites volunteers to tag Monarch butterflies to assist with tracking their migration patterns. Training sessions begin at the end of summer, and you can view them here: MonarchWatch - Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo. Additionally, during June, the Cool Blue Bridgeport program at the zoo is focusing on sharing knowledge about Monarch butterflies with visitors through conducting a scavenger hunt taking place on Saturdays. Please feel free to come to the zoo on a Saturday during June to join in the fun of learning about Monarch butterflies and to have a chance to win a water bottle if you complete the scavenger hunt!

Thank you for reading this blog about Monarch butterflies!