A black-, orange- and white-checkered moth walked in...

...and decided to stay! Thus begins the story of the Ailanthus Webworm Moth and its excellent adventure. (This is a companion piece to an earlier post on the Common Buttonbush.) While Matty and I were sketching the Buttonbush flowers along the Little Miami River, we noticed a small black-, orange- and white-checkered insect was on a lot of the blossoms...

Ailanthus Webworm Moths on a Buttonbush Inflorescence
These two dapper moths look like they are tiptoeing through the styles of each tiny flower. 

Ailanthus Webworm Moth
I'd seen the bug before, but had never studied it, so when we got home, I got out my "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America," by Kenn Kaufman, and sure enough, there it was, an Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea), a day-flying moth that pollinates a lot of flowers as it visits them to sip nectar.

An Ailanthus Webworm Moth clings to the underside of a Swamp Milkweed flower along the Little Miami River near Spring Valley Wildlife Area. 

Tree of Heaven
This moth, which looks like a long skinny beetle when seen from a distance, is "sort of" a native to the United States (and here is where its excellent adventure kicks in). The lovely little moth got brave one day and jumped host plants. Originally, the moth was native to southern Florida and Central and South American, where its host plant, the Paradise Tree grew, but one day, it found a Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which is closely related to the Paradise Tree, and decided to live on it. The Tree of Heaven is not native to the United States. It's from China, but it was introduced to the U.S. in the 1700s.  Since then, it has spread across the country, and the Ailanthus Webworm Moth moved along with it. (Click here for a detailed history of the Tree of Heaven in the United States and control strategies to prevent its spread.)

The Ailanthus Webworm Moth originally was native to southern Florida, but it followed the Tree of Heaven, an invasive introduced from China in the 1700s, as it spread across the nation.

The Tree of Heaven looks a lot like our native Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina), which produces seeds beneficial to the birds. There are several ways to tell the two trees apart. The easiest is the Tree of Heaven has smooth leaflets that turn yellow in autumn, while Staghorn Sumac has serrated leaves and turns bright red. Click here for an earlier post on Staghorn Sumac to see what it looks like in the fall, and learn about how it helps birds get through deep winter.  Click here for a pdf titled, "Invasives Strike Force Plant Guide, 2012," from the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. This guide teaches you how to spot many invasive trees and tell them apart from native look-alikes.

An Ailanthus Webworm Moth, an early instar Monarch caterpillar, and a Monarch butterfly all share a Swamp Milkweed flower. The larvae of the Ailanthus Webworm Moth only eats Tree of Paradise leaves, but the adult moths are not picky and pollinate many types of flowers. 

One more thing...
The Tree of Heaven is famous for its starring role in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," by Betty Smith. Click here for a link to a critical essay on the symbols in the book, including the Tree of Paradise described in the first chapter, where the tree was a metaphor for all the immigrants coming into New York City during the 1700s and 1800s.


Additional references
For more information on the Ailanthus Webworm Moth, click here for "Moths of Ohio Field Guide," by David J. Horn, Ph.D; Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, or here for an interesting post on the blog "MOBugs; Missouri's Majority."

(I really enjoyed spending the day sketching with Matty (8-7-2015) at the Spring Valley Wildlife Area. Getting out in the wild with pencil and paper is relaxing and helps cement memories. The next day, I drove out with my camera to get photos. Beauty was everywhere...)

Monarch butterfly—from chrysalis to flight...

In a post earlier this summer, I mentioned a monarch butterfly had found our little milkweed stand. I had hoped she would return and lay an egg...and she did! She (and maybe a few of her sisters) laid many eggs. We've counted 11 caterpillars so far in our backyard monarch nursery, and the first went from chrysalis to flight Tuesday afternoon...

When the caterpillar first forms a chrysalis, it is a light jade green. After about 9 days, it starts to darken until finally it is crystal clear and you can see the butterfly locked inside. When you see the Monarch's orange and black wings clearly through the pupal case, get ready to welcome a butterfly into the world. (Our butterfly emerged about 10 minutes after I took this photo.)

A newly emerged monarch butterfly dangles from its pupal case (10:41 a.m.). Her wings are wrinkled and wet. She must expand the wings by pushing hemolymph (bug blood) into the wing veins.

Butterflies secrete a liquid to help soften the chrysalis (pupal case) so they can emerge (eclose). You can still see droplets of the liquid inside the chrysalis. 

As the wings straighten out and harden, the butterfly starts to climb higher and away from the spent chrysalis (12:21 p.m.). 

Our new monarch butterfly hangs from a milkweed leaf clearly chewed and eaten away by a monarch caterpillar (maybe by her two weeks earlier).

The wings continue to straighten and harden. It's been a little over two hours since the butterfly emerged (12:50 p.m.). 

 Her wings are considerably harder and straighter...she's gorgeous, but she still hangs tight, not moving. The black and white polka dots on her head, thorax, and wing tips are just as striking as the orange color in her wings. 

Like a toddler beginning to walk, our newly emerged monarch flaps her wings for the first time (1:03 p.m.). It's been almost 2.5 hours since she broke out of the pupal case.

Finally, almost another hour later, at 1:58, she is ready to try her wings. I switched over to video to capture her flight. 
I knew it would be soon...

Monarch Butterfly's First Flight from Kelly Riccetti on Vimeo.

What a crazy ride...
I had read it usually takes monarch butterflies about an hour to go from emergence to flight, but our little girl took almost 3.5 hours. She dawdled, and grew stronger, and dawdled some more. The longer wait gave me time to really think about the process of metamorphosis, and I'm glad for it. The more I thought about what was happening, the more amazed I was. I had been reading about the process of metamorphosis since I was a kid, but I had never witnessed every stage...from egg, to all the larval instars, to the chrysalis, to emergence and flight. It's an outrages process...and immensely cool to witness.

Monarch development at a glance...
Here is a quick timeline to get a feel for how long it takes to go from egg to butterfly. Monarchs undergo complete metamorphosis and have four stages of life—egg, larva (the caterpillar stage), pupa (the chrysalis stage), and adult.

Egg (3-6 days) 
Female Monarchs lay a single egg on a milkweed leaf (the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat). The eggs hatch in 3-6 days.

Caterpillar (9-15 total days in the larval stage; 5 instars, each lasting 2-3 days) 
When the egg hatches, the caterpillar is so small it's hard to see, but it grows very fast. Soon it can no longer fit in its skin, so it sheds its skin and continues to grow. Each time a caterpillar sheds is called an instar. Monarch caterpillars go through 5 instars before they are full grown.

Chrysalis (9-14 days in the pupal stage)
When the caterpillar is full grown, it finds a safe place to pupate, often roaming up to 20-30 feet away. It creates a tiny silk mat on the underside of the leaf and then attaches itself to the mat with its cremaster (the hooklike tip of the pupa). It then sheds its skin for the last time. Under the skin is a light green casing called a chrysalis. At first it is soft, but within an hour it hardens to a protective shell. Now is when the magic begins...one of the transformations going on within the casing is the change of mouthparts from chewing (caterpillars chew milkweed leaves) to drinking (butterflies sip nectar through their straw-like tongue called a proboscis). Additionally, legs change, eyes change, and wings sprout. For 9-14 days the caterpillar totally transforms into a butterfly ready to take to the sky.

Butterfly (Adult: 1-4 hours after emerging can fly, 4-7 days later can mate, dies 2-6 weeks later)
When a butterfly cracks open the chrysalis, it emerges (ecloses) with wet, crumpled, and useless wings. It takes 1-4 hours for the wings to straighten, harden and dry. It is at its most vulnerable now because it is helpless and can't fly. Just 4-7 days after taking flight, butterflies are ready to mate...and start the process all over. Adult butterflies born in the summer don't migrate and live for 2-6 weeks. Those that are born at the end of summer do not mate and lay eggs. They can't survive here in the winter, so they put their energy into migrating (to Mexico) until spring when they return north to mate and lay eggs. "Winter" monarchs live 7-9 months.

For details on the Monarch's lifecycle, click here for a page from the Monarch Butterfly Fund, and here for the National Wildlife Federation's page.

Monarch camouflage—disruptive coloration and warning coloration (with Müllerian mimicry)
There are many types of camouflage in the animal kingdom, and the monarch butterfly exhibits two. You would think the black and white polka dots on a monarch's head, thorax and wing tips would draw attention to it, but it's just the opposite. The black and white dots create a disruptive coloration that acts as camouflage. The disruptive coloration breaks up the outline of the butterfly's head, making it more difficult to see.

In an opposite fashion, the bright orange attention-drawing color in the monarch's wings is a warning coloration meant to convince birds and other predators to shy away. Monarchs are toxic from their larval diet of milkweed leaves, and birds quickly learn to ignore the horrible-tasting butterflies, making the incredibly noticeable color its camouflage. Monarchs also exhibit Müllerian mimicry, where two equally toxic species mimic each other to the benefit of each, enhancing their "scare appeal!" The viceroy butterfly looks similar to a monarch but is also unpalatable. Previously, the viceroy was thought to exhibit Batesian mimicry (where butterflies not as toxic mimic the monarch for protection), but in 1991 it was proven that viceroys were just as unpalatable as monarchs, and they mimic each other for mutual protection.  Click here for the article, "The viceroy butterfly is not a batesian mimic," by David B. Ritland and Lincoln P. Brower in the journal Nature, for details, or click here for an article titled, "Mutual Mimicry: Viceroy and Monarch," by Kara Rogers on the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog.

Prequel...the caterpillar!
If you want to see a monarch caterpillar, click here for the prequel to this post.

A monarch on the the milkweed...

Five years ago a volunteer milkweed plant sprung up in our backyard. Initially it was just one sprout...one strange little plant that kept getting taller, and taller, and taller. At first I didn't know what it was, until suddenly it dawned on me...milkweed! I have no idea how that downy little seed made it to our backyard, but it did, and it's done well. The single plant has grown into a stand of fourteen plants that live around my little pond beside the deck—definitely not an ideal place for the gangly plants, but that's okay. There are no other milkweed plants in the area, which makes our stand all the more special. We've had milkweed beetles and milkweed bugs, but until last week, the most famous milkweed-loving insect of them all, the monarch butterfly, had never visited. Our wait is over, because finally, there's a monarch on the milkweed...

Monarch on the Milkweed
(I used Sennelier oil pastels to create this painting inspired by the first monarch to visit our volunteer common milkweed patch. I hope she comes back and lays eggs so I can do a painting of a monarch caterpillar!)

Monarchs need our help...
Monarchs lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed, and the caterpillars that hatch out of the eggs never leave those plants. They only eat milkweed, so without a healthy supply of their host plant, monarchs will die out. Forever. Like...extinction forever. The problem is milkweed is being eradicated in the monarch's summer breeding grounds. In the midwest, where most of the monarchs are born, genetically engineered crops resistant to Roundup (an herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate) are being planted. Previously, milkweed grew in the channels between the rows of crops, but now, GMOs allow for mass applications of the herbicide that leave the crops unaltered but the milkweed dead.

Plant milkweed...
If you have a patch of grass, turn it into a small urban or suburban prairie. I'm getting ready to do that in my backyard. This autumn I'm going to sow the seeds of native perennials, including milkweed, wildflowers, and grasses to form a small backyard prairie. I'll put a sign up that says Wildflower Garden...or Butterfly Garden...or Pollinator Garden...or maybe even Monarch Rescue Station!

The sun was sinking fast when this female Monarch butterfly decided to take nectar from one of the common milkweed flowers in our backyard. Even with a flash it was too dark for a good photo, and the monarch is blurred, but you get the picture!

Common milkweed smells wonderful with a sweet fragrance that hangs heavy in the air. 

I hope she comes back again.

The complete picture...
It's not just milkweed eradication that is harming the monarchs, though. According to "Conservation Status and Ecology of the Monarch Butterfly in the United States (March 2015)," by Sarina Jepsen, Dale Schweitzer, Bruce Young, Nicol Sears, Margaret Ormes, and Scott Hoffman Black, there are three main factors causing their rapid decline: loss of milkweed breeding habitat due to "Roundup Ready" crops and herbicide, logging at overwintering sites, and climate change and extreme weather. Other causes are disease, predators, parasites, and insecticides. If you want to learn more, click here to download their interesting 30-page pdf document where in addition to the monarch's conservation status, you can also learn about the butterfly's life cycle and diet, breeding grounds, migration routes, and overwintering locations.

For more information:

Click here for the Xerces Society press release, "Monarch Butterflies in North American Found to be Vulnerable to Extinction," March 10, 2015.

Click here for the Xerces Society press release, "Monarch Numbers up Slightly, but Butterfly Still at Risk of Extinction," January 27, 2015.

Click here and here for nice representations of the monarch's life cycle including photos of its five instars.

Native Plant Nursery in our area...and ecosourcing...
If you live in the Cincinnati area, and you're looking for a native plant nursery, try Keystone Flora. They grow their plants from seeds and cuttings generated from their own nursery. All the original sources were within 100 to 150 miles of Cincinnati. These plants originated from our region, so they are well suited to grow here without fertilizers or special water requirements. "Ecosourcing" is using native plants from local seed for local use. It's important because it preserves the genetic diversity and genotypes of local plants. Although plants may be the same species, there are often genetic differences between the same plants from different regions. To learn more about why native genotypes are important, click here for the article, "Problems Associated with the Introduction of Non-Native Genotypes on NRS Reserves."

Click here for a list of some of the native flowers Keystone Flora sells.