Butterfly display case draws "wow" from students
Duanesburg
Elementary School Teacher Chris Mezzio wowed students this school
year when she constructed a "day in the life of LIVE monarch
butterflies" display in a glass-incased bulletin board in the
school's hallway.Mezzio, a self-proclaimed lover of Monarch butterflies, spends a lot of time in the summer searching for these beautiful insects.
Monarch butterflies eat milkweed, so Mezzio stapled tall milkweed stalks to the inside of the decorated case and put the caterpillars inside. Students were thrilled to see live caterpillars eating and munching away.
Soon
enough the caterpillars traveled to the top of the case to
make chrysalides . A chrysalis is the pupal stage of
butterflies. When a caterpillar is fully grown, it makes a
button of silk which it uses to fasten its body to a leaf or
a twig. Then the caterpillar's skin comes off for the final
time. Under this old skin is a hard skin called a chrysalis.
Because chrysalides are often showy and are formed in the open, they are the most familiar examples of pupae. Most chrysalides are attached to a surface by a velcro-like arrangement of a silken pad spun by the caterpillar and a set of hooks at the tip of the pupal abdomen.
"There were 15 chrysalides hanging from the top of the case and a few along the sides and glass," says Mezzio. "Our first butterfly came out on Friday, October 1 in Mrs. Lyons' room, and it was a girl!"
Over the weekend, the rest of the butterflies made their appearance because on Monday, October 4 there were 15 butterflies in the case.
"So far there are many more girl butterflies than boy butterflies," says Mezzio. She can tell the difference between boy and girl Monarch butterflies by examining a butterfly's spots. "Boy Monarchs have block dots on their bottom wings."
Adult Monarchs possess two pair of brilliant orange-reddish wings, featuring black veins and white spots along the edges. Their wingspan is about four inches, and they weigh less than half an ounce. Males, who possess distinguishing black dot (stigmata) along the veins of their wings, are slightly bigger than the females.
Eventually it will be time for Mezzio to return the Monarchs' to their natural habitat. She explains that when she releases them they will gather together with other northeast Monarchs.
At the end of October and the beginning of November, after traveling two months, the butterflies settle
into hibernation colonies in the mountains of central Mexico, where the States of Mexico and Michoacan meet. There they will spend the winter hibernating.
From mid-November until mid-February, the Monarchs' hibernation colonies remain relatively stable. During the second half of February, when temperatures rise and humidity decreases in the forests, the butterflies come down from the slopes to mate. And the butterflies that survive the hibernation in Mexico return in the spring to the southern United States.
