Our final Mystery Class location is a familiar place to those who've tracked the monarch butterfly migration since Feburary. Angangueo, Mexico is the winter home to millions and millions of monarch butterflies. In fact, most of the monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains migrate to this region each fall. There are only 9 monarch sancturies in Mexico and four of them are in the mountains surrounding Angangueo!
High school students from Blake School in the U.S. delivered a lap top computer to these Mexican researchers who are studying the monarchs there. They also worked with the local high school in Angangueo (the official Mystery Class #10) to connect them to the Internet. Unfortunately, the phone lines were unreliable so we couldn't exchange e-mail and they couldn't send a personal e-mail greeting. Before Journey North begins again next February, we'll be working on connecting e-mail to Angangueo. By the time you come back next year we hope you can finally meet Mystery Class # 10 in person!
Just think, while you carefully noted the change in daylength at
Mystery site #10, millions of monarch butterflies did too!
Lengthening photoperiod is the butterflies' cue that spring is
approaching and it's time to begin their migration. The monarchs
leave Angangueo each spring around the time of the spring equinox.
Look at Mystery Class #10 on your graph and see how much daylength
changes in Angangueo before the equinox. Are you surprised that
butterflies can detect this change?
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