Meet the Monarch Butterfly Expert

Julie Brophy

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  Karen Oberhauser
  University of Minnesota
  Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior

  Dr. Karen Oberhauser is a Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. She has studied monarch biology for the past 11 years, and still has enough questions to keep her busy for a lifetime! She has learned that female monarchs can lay over 1100 eggs during their life, but that the average for females in captivity is about 700. These eggs are laid over an adult lifespan of four to six weeks. Even though neither parent provides any care for their offspring after the eggs are laid, females are careful to lay their eggs on the correct hostplant, and males actually provide some nutrients to the female during mating.

  Karen and her students are also working on understanding how a protozoan parasite affects monarchs and how it is transmitted from females to their offspring. This parasite can be a real problem for people who raise monarchs in captivity, and it is also present in wild populations. Other current projects in her lab are learning what triggers the physiological changes in the monarchs that migrate instead of reproducing, and studying larval pigmentation.

  She spent a week studying overwintering monarchs in Mexico this year, and hopes to initiate a research program there, since monarchs are only in Minnesota for three to four months each year!

  Karen remembers collecting monarch larvae as a child, and, despite hours of watching them just before they formed their pupae or emerged as adults, never actually seeing either of these events. Now that her research involves rearing hundreds of monarchs at a time, she has seen them often, as have her ten and seven year-old daughters, Amy and Leah. She feels that witnessing such amazing natural events, and being involved in a project like the Journey North, is a wonderful way to interest people in conservation and science.

  For the past several years, Karen has worked with teachers and their students who are interested in keeping monarchs in their classrooms or who want to learn more about monarchs or other insects. She is involved in a nationwide project to promote studying monarch butterflies as a way to get students more interested in biology and the environment, and welcomes questions from people who want to get involved in this project.

  If anyone is interested in contacting Karen about using monarchs in their classrooms, they can write to her at:

  University of Minnesota
  Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior
  St. Paul, MN 55108