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BIOTECHNOLOGY

Monarch butterfly
Monarch Butterfly
 The Monarch butterfly is a stunning
species with many people following them
during their lives. They exhibit a certain
beauty throughout all of their life stages
and their migration is fascinating to most
everyone that studies them.
 The fact that their numbers are decreasing
has scientists, gardeners, and wildlife
enthusiasts concerned and looking for
ways to preserve these amazing creatures.
Monarch Butterfly
Scientific Classification
Kingdom : : Animalia
Phylum : : Arthropoda
Class : : Insecta
Order : : Lepidoptera
Family : : Nymphalidae
Genus : : Danaus
Species : : D. Plexippus
Monarch Butterfly Migration
 Guinness world record – 2880 Miles

“A tagged male monarch, released by Donald A.

Davis (Canada) at Presquile Provincial Park near
brighton, Ontario, Canada, on september 10, 1989,
was recaptured on april 8, 1989 in austin texas,
U.S.A., traveling an estimated 2880 miles, making
this the World’s Longest Butterfly Migration.
 Monarch Butterfly Can Produce Four Or Five
Generations each year. The first three or four
generations live up to six weeks, hatching in spring
and dying in fall when the weather starts to turn cold.
The migrating generation lives for six to eight
months. They hatch in the fall, migrate to a warmer
climate, hibernate, then start a new first generation in
the spring time.
Identifying Monarch
Butterflies
Monarch
Large, no tails
Above and Below:
Orange with black lined
veins; Black border with
small white spots;
Hind wings have no Viceroy
Horizontal bar crossing
the veins
(as in viceroy)
Identifying Female And Male Butterfly

Female Butterfly  Male Butterfly

 Thick Vein Pigmentation. Thin Vein Pigmentation.

No hind wing pouches. Swollen pouches on the
hind wings.
 EGG
 Egg (3-4 days) The eggs hatch
about four days after they laid.
Approximate dimensions: 1.2mm high;
0.9mm wide.

 Each mother has roughly 200

eggs to deposit, and optimally,
the eggs should be laid separately,
among a number of milkweed plants,
as a protection against sibling
cannibalism
 LARVA (CATERPILLAR)
 Larva(Caterpillar; 10-14 days) it
Is during this stage that monarchs
do all of their growing. They begin
life by eating their eggshell, and
then move on to the plant on which
they where laid.
 PUPA(CHRYSALIS)
 Pupa (Chrysalis; 10-14 days) During the pupal stage the
transformation from larva to adult is complete. Pupae are
much less mobile than larvae adults, but they often exhibit
sudden movements if they are disturbed. Like other
butterflies, Monarch pupae are well camouflaged, since they
have no other means of defence against predators.
 ADULT (BUTTERFLY)
 They emerge as beautifully
colored, black-orange-and-white
adults. The colorful pattern
makes monarchs easy to
identify. The distinctive pattern
warns predators that the insect
are foul tasting and poisonous.
 The primary job of the adult
stage is to reproduce to mate
and lay the eggs that will
become the next generation
 FOOD FOR CATERPILLARS
 Although the adult feeds on vast range of
plants, the caterpillar depends solely on
milkweed
 Since the plant’s milky essence, its latex, is

full of glycosides that are poisonous to other

animals, the milkweed-sated monarchs are
unpalatable to most predators
 FOOD FOR BUTTERFLIES
 Nectar from flowers, which is
about 20% sugar, provides
most of their adult food.
Monarchs are not very picky
about the source of their
nectar, and will visit many
different flowers.
 Pollinators – Monarch butterfly
A dangerous Beauty
More than beautiful, monarch butterflies contribute to health to of
our planet. While feeding nectar, they pollinate many types of wild
flowers.
 Plant Pollination
Adult butterflies drink nectar from blossoms on flowering
plants. Butterflies use a long proboscis to reach deep into
the bloom to get at the nectar. Like bees and other
pollinators, butterflies pick up pollen while they sip a
flower’s nectar. Once they’re off to another plant, the
pollen goes with them, helping to pollinate the plant
species. About one third of the food people eat depends on
the work of pollinators such as butterflies.
Monarchs experience significant threats
to their survival
 Loss of milkweed plants
Although monarchs feed on the nectar of many flowers, they
lay their eggs only on certain types of milkweed plants.
Unfortunately, milkweeds are often eradicated as noxious
weeds. Urbanization, industrialized, large-scale farms, and
drought conditions have also resulted in significant plant loss.
 Loss of winter habitat
The butterflies' winter habitat in Mexico and California is
rapidly shrinking due to deforestation, harsh weather,
development and other disruptions. Because all monarchs
gather in only a few locations, the overall population is at risk.
Monarchs experience significant threats to their survival

 Climate Change
Especially during the last decade, changes in
climate have resulted in more out-of-season storms,
severe temperature drops and excessive rain. The
combination of both wet and cold is deadly and has
resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of
butterflies.
Factors that kill monarch
butterfly
 Parasite
Tachinid flies-These parasitic flies lay tiny eggs on
monarch caterpillars.
The hatching maggots
burrow inside the
caterpillar and feed from
the inside out, eventually
killing it.
Bacillus thuringiensis (BT)
 This naturally-occurring bacteria is used in
powders and sprays to protect food crops. It has
become a widely used pest management tool to
control the spread of gypsy moth caterpillars in
spring, with all other caterpillars (including
monarchs) becoming collateral damage.
 When ingested, BT ruptures the gut lining of
monarch caterpillars. The irritated caterpillar stops
eating and will die within a few days.
Monarch butterflies and Bt corn
 Prior to the registration of insecticidal Bt corn plants (plants
containing genes from the bacterium B. thuringiensis) that
express proteins toxic to some insects, the EPA conducted risk
assessments of the potential effects of Bt endotoxins on a wide
range of organisms including birds, aquatic invertebrates, honey
bees, ladybugs, earthworms, springtails, other non‐target
organisms and endangered species.
 The future development and use of agricultural biotechnology
has been challenged by two preliminary studies indicating
potential risk to monarch butterfly populations by pollen from
corn engineered to express proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis.
Monarch butterflies and Bt corn
 Exposure to Bt proteins by lepidopterous larvae
was considered to be primarily due to ingestion of
leaf tissue of Bt corn plants, and insects feeding on
these plants would be considered pests. Another
method of exposure to lepidopterous larvae would
be through pollen deposits.
Monarch butterflies
and Bt corn
 In 1999, researchers at Cornell University did a
preliminary lab study on the effects of Bt corn pollen on
monarch caterpillars. The lead researcher, Dr. John Losey,
sent a description of the study to the editors of the science
journal Nature (Volume 399, 20 May 1999, page 214).
 In Dr. Losey's study, monarch caterpillars in a laboratory
were fed milkweed leaves that had been dusted with
pollen from Bt corn. This was done because wind-borne
corn pollen can settle on the leaves of milkweed plants,
and milkweed is all that monarch caterpillars eat.
Milkweed often grows in meadows or untilled fields and can be found in
or near corn fields. Dr. Losey wanted to determine whether pollen
from Bt corn would affect monarch caterpillars. His study found that " …
larvae of the monarch butterfly on milkweed leaves dusted with
transgenic Bt-corn pollen ate less, grew more slowly, and suffered higher
mortality than those fed leaves dusted with untransformed corn pollen or
leaves without pollen.“
Some people understood the results of the lab study to mean
that Bt corn harms monarch caterpillars, but other scientists pointed out
that the study may not accurately reflect what would happen in a field
of Bt corn.
• There were higher amounts of Bt pollen on the milkweed leaves in
the lab than there would be found in a field;
• In the lab, caterpillars were limited to eating only leaves covered in
corn pollen, whereas in a field, caterpillars may be able to avoid
pollen-coated leaves.
As a result of Dr. Losey's findings, some scientists decided to
combine their research on this topic and produced a large
body of peer-reviewed work on monarch butterflies
and Bt corn, which was published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). These studies
concluded that monarch butterflies exposed to Bt corn in the
environment are not subjected to any significant risk.
The
End